#Holy Fire, and Other Stories#, by _Ida A. R. Wylie_ (John Lane Company). I have called attention to many of these stories in previous years, but now that they are reprinted as a group I must reaffirm my belief that few among the younger English short story writers have such a command of dramatic finality as Miss Wylie. It is true that these stories might have been told with advantage in a more quiet tone. This would have made the war stories more memorable, but perhaps the problem which the book presents for solution is whether or no an instinctive dramatist is using the wrong literary medium. Certainly in "Melia, No Good" her treatment would have been less effective in a play than in a short story. III. #Translations# #When the King Loses His Head, and Other Stories#, by _Leonid Andreyev._ Translated by _Archibald J. Wolfe_ (International Book Publishing Company), and #Modern Russian Classics.# Introduction by _Isaac Goldberg_ (The Four Seas Company). In previous years I have called attention to other selections of Andreyev's stories. The present collection includes the best from the other volumes, with some new material. "Judas Iscariot" and "Lazarus" are the best of the prose poems. "Ben-Tobith," "The Marseillaise," and "Dies Iræ" are the most memorable of his very short stories, while the volume also includes "When The King Loses His Head," and a less-known novelette entitled "Life of Father Vassily." The volume entitled "Modern Russian Classics" includes five short stories by Andreyev, Sologub, Artzibashev, Chekhov, and Gorky. #Prometheus: the Fall of the House of Limón: Sunday Sunlight: Poetic Novels of Spanish Life#, by _Ramón Pérez de Ayala_, Prose translations by _Alice P. Hubbard_: Poems done into English by _Grace Hazard Conkling_ (E. P. Dutton & Co.). Señor Pérez de Ayala has achieved in these three stories what may be quite frankly regarded as a literary form. They do not conform to a single rule of the short story as we have been taught to know it. In fact, this is a pioneer book which opens up a new field. The stories have no plot, no climax, no direct characterization, and at first sight no plan. Presently it appears that the author's apparent episodic treatment of his substance has a special unity of its own woven around the spiritual relations of his heroes. It is hard to judge of an author's style in translation, but the brilliant coloring of his pictures is apparent from this English version. The nearest analogue in English are the fantasies of Norman Douglas, but Pérez de Ayala has a much more profoundly realized philosophy of life. The poems which serve as interludes in these stories, curiously enough, add to the unity of the action.