s not very much that can be called plot;
what there is concerns itself with the fortunes of _Miss Jessie's_
tenants, the chief objects of her ministrations. In the end an
air-raid, of which the details are surely unusual, provides _Miss
Jessie_ with the opportunity for a deed of heroism that I am still
trying to visualize (her nephew had thrown her down and was protecting
her body with his own; but the heroine, seeing this, changed places
with her defender "between the flash of the shell's impact and the
explosion") and finishes, with an appropriately tearful death-scene, a
tale that would have been improved by more restraint in the telling.

In _The Thunderbolt_ (UNWIN) _Georgina Bonham_, at home and amongst
her intimates, delighted in small-talk. It flowed in an unceasing
stream, particularly when _Dr. Rayke_, her chief adviser and
confidant, came to tea and ate his favourite currant-and-sultana cake.
Everything, in fact, prepares you for one of the tamest of all tame
novels, when suddenly the "Thunderbolt" of the title remembers its
attributes and bursts from a clear sky. Thenceforward Mr. GEORGE
COLMORE'S book is of a particularly painful character. For the horrors
which here accumulate on horror's head I find no adequate excuse, even
though the villain of the story is a German.

* * * * *

_Blanche Maddison_, the heroine of _The Obstinate Lady_ (HUTCHINSON),
might without any excess of rudeness be called pig-headed. With her
case in my mind let me advise women who have married disgusting men
to seek whatever shelter the law may give them rather than adopt her
persistently cold and aloof manner. I hardly wonder that her husband
found her a little exasperating. We all know Mr. W.E. NORRIS as a
novelist who can be trusted not only to tell an intriguing story,
but also to construct it irreproachably. But here, I think, he has
penalised himself with the materials he has chosen. However he sets
bravely to work to wipe off his handicap, and very nearly succeeds. If
I cannot credit him with complete success it is because the subsidiary
tale of love which he gives us is really too anaemic. Yet I can
conceive of people so fed up with the makers of blood-heat fiction
that Mr. NORRIS'S lukewarm method will afford them a pleasant change.

* * * * *

However cleverly Mr. WILLIAM CAINE may treat his theme, _The Wife
Who Came Alive_ (JENKINS) is only another versio