The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-12-08
THE BOOK SHELF
Bv THE BIBLIoPHILE
CALVARY ALLEY"

CALVARY ALLEY"
 By Alice Hogan Rice. Illustrated By
 Waiter Biggs. The Century Company,
 Publishers. New York.
 Alice Hogan Rice, whose chief fame story, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,' seems destined to repeat this success, for her new story, Calvary AL ley" is in every way one of the quaint est, most charming and readable books which has been published in many moons.
 The rich and gorgeous cathedral fronted on the equally rich and gorgeous avenue but it backed up against Cal slum But not entirely sunless and not entirely sinful was Calvary alley. for Nance Molloy lived there.
 External circumstances did not con- spire to make life a glad and brilliant pageant for Nance, but there was a conspiring of forces within her nature which transformed for her, even Cal vary alley into a thrilling world of TO- nance, adventure and danger.
 This new book by the author of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," tells the story of Nance Molloy's growing up and falling in love; with a great deal about good many other interesting people, for Nance was one who achieved con- tactS with the world about her. There was Uncle Jed, whos was her self-ap pointed guardian; and MT. and Mrs. Snawdor, her stepfather and step mother, making Nance what she her self called "a two-step." There was Dan Lewis, who was a child with Nance, and whose mother was charitably termed "a mystery in the alley; and there was old Mir. Demorest, who played the violin and taught Nance to dance, and who had come from another world than Cal vary alley. He was a mystery, too. but very charming one.
 And more such, easily recognizable as belonging to that whimsical, beloved family of fiction people which began with Mrs. Wiggs."
 "SONIA"
 By Stephen McKenna. George H. Doran Company, Publishers, New York.
 Although the novel bears the name of Sonia" the heroine is quite overshad- owed by David O'Rane, ilIegitimate, son of that Lord O'Rane who died fighting for Greece, picturesque, sensitive, strong willed generous, dramatic, a born rebel and a born leader of men. His recruit ing efforts show he went into the war with the Midland Fusliers and was cru fed-litera1ly- well and wildly told The author has the gift of mak- ing his people real. We know them as George Oalsleigh knew them, we see them and the world of inconsistencies in which they lived, through his eyes. Society and politics are his pursuits, with journalism and good deal of propaganda work; for Oakleigh and his uncle are the heads of a disarmament  until the war comes. Then Oakleigh finds some of the things he has himself written turning up to confound him in an exceedingly unpleasant manner, es- pecially his one-time views about the Germans.
 Sonia is a picture of the lives of the English governing classes, a sketch from their point of view of that world of theirs which crumbled into ruins at the outbreak of the great war-these are what MT MeKenna has endeavored to give us in his story. The narrator, though not the hero, is one George Oak leigh, public school boy, Oxford under graduate, and member of Parliament. who sets down for the future benefit of a very little boy something of what he knows about the kind of existence led by people of his own sort from 1898 to 1915. And this he does by telling the histories of Jim Loring. otherwise the Marquess Loring, Sonia Dainton, profess sional beauty and David O'Rane-espe- cially David O'Rane. It is with David's first appearance at Melton, the big tra- dition crammed public school, that the book opens; it is with David's declara- tion that England has been saved by "a of suffering and owes debt to those who have died for her which can only be repaid by a "new birth,' the making of world in which no one shall have the right to inflict pain, that the book ends.
 HEROES OF TODAY" By Mary R. Parkman. Illustrated With
 Photographs. The Century Company
 Publishers, New York.
 Heroes of Today by Mary R. Park man. consists of set of brief, crisp nar-