The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-25

an Of luxurious tastes which have been fully encouraged and fed by her prosper GUS husband. Then comes disaster, and W hen he tells her what has happened he rouses her to fury by letting her know that he expects her to go back to ner fathers home until he can get on his feet again. An unexpected thing has been happening to Celia of late, for she has been falling in love with her hus- band in a way that has surprised and disturbed her not a little, and that fact makes his calm assumption that she will want to return to the comfort of her ia ther's home until he can furnish plenty of soft pillowng for her again sting her into a furious temper. The novel is really the story of that temper and what came of it. MT. Webster works it all out with many interesting ups and downs in one of which Alfred Blair comes near to blundering back into his old mistaken attitude about his wife, and Celia herself, in new development of anger because she is almost convinced he still thinks her merely appendage, a child to be hunored, comes near to making a very great mistake. But a swift intuition, born out of the recent softening of the hard and glassy surfaces of her nature holds her back at the critical moment"
 Mr. Webster writes with a convincing force about men, women and things, and in 'The Thoroughbred" he shows the same suavity and subtleness that he did in his former big novel.
 ''WILDFIRE."
 By Zane Gray. Illustrated. Harper
 Brothers, publishers, New York.
 "Wildier," Zane Gray's new story, has to do, we are delighted to say. with a horse, but then how could it be a Zane Gray story if it didn't?
 This time "Wildfre," around whom the story the lovers, the betting, the horse racing and everything else centers, is a magnificent red stallion, monarch of the valleys and the highlands, the canyons and the ranges-such was Wildfre in the days of his freedom Proud, spirited loyal, a matchless racer, he was a prize any wild horse-hunter of those early days when Utah was first settled might have been glad, indeed, to win. Five hundred miles and more did Lin Slope chase this wonderful animal, and might have lost him and his own life as well at the last had it not been for girl. a girl who knew and loved horses. and was able to tame even Wildfre Lucy Bostil. daughter and only child of old Bostil of Bostil's Ford. a man who owned and loved race horses, had been almost born in the saddle, and what she did not know about horses was very, very Jtite, lldeeu It was she who rescued Wildfire and the man who had broken him; they both loved her after that, and she loved both of them.
 As for the plot there is the girl. and there is the man who starved and thrsted and nearly lost his life for the sake of Wildfire; there are the horse breakers, and the girls father, mixture of evil and good. and there Is the youth who goes insane, and there are many others, but best of all is ''Wdl1re" himself, the splendid horse of the valleys
 Zane Grey has written many fine books, but his last novel is the best of them all. He has written of wonderful horses, but Wildfire outruns them all. He has writ ten often of men and women who loved adventure and had their fill of it: but in this story set in Americas S most drama tic scenery the adventures and passions of his characters partake of the wild free dom and strength of the desert and mountains to which they belong There is much grace and charm in the writing.
 THE PURPLE LAND"
 By w. H. Hudson. E. P. Dutton X Co.,.
 publishers, No. 4S1 Fifth avenue. New
 York.
 Seldom has the literary world been so