The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-06-05

was her husband. But, she told her self, she had never married any body.
 Thus begins this love and mystery story set in one of the large cities of the west. The heroine starts out to trail herself, to discover who she is. to find out about this puzzling, ap- pealing man who is her Husband" She enters jungle of conflicting cir cumstances. and how she workcs out her fate makes an absorbing story.
 The author, the wife of an engineer after her first successful novel, "Gret," decided to give up writing and devote herself to the study of music. She spent four years in solid un- broken pursuit of the muse, but, as she says, musicians are born. not made; and I wasn't born one. Char acters still came and stood around and waited The idea of Tn the House of Another came. and the troubled Elsie was insistent and de- manded to have her problem solved. So I backslid from the music and wrote Elsie out. Then her ghost was laid and poked her away in my scrib- ble cupboard. And there she stayed until a chance letter from my publish CTS brought her out IHE E GOhfLE I1ElIT11S. By Marie Conway Oemler. The Century
 Company. Publishers, New York
 City.
 The Purple Heights" is Mrs. Oem- ler's latest novel and it is as rich in laughter and tears, in thrillingly dra- matic situations. and in all those other clements that endear a story to great public, as was the authors first aston ishing success.
 Peter Devereaux- Champneys wid- owed mother lived in a three-room house in Riverton, s. C., and this boy was the last of the once powerful too little food and too much work, and the boy. who already had been pronounced dunce at school, became an cdd-job youngster in the town and a fisherman on the river And his pe- lcyed mother, dying. had told him to raise the name of champneys to great ness again.
 Peter saw the purple heights" afar. and he felt that he had discovered a way to achieve his mothers ambition. Riverton, $. C., promoted him from odd jobs to clerk in hardware store and could do no more.
 Peter did not disappoint his mother who had said she would know when he reached the purple heights" By way of New York and Paris, by way of toll and suffering and the gift that RiVerton could not see, by way of mar riage to an unknown girl who hated him. and then to an unknown woman who loved him, Peter at last achieved the purple heights.
 In addition to ''The Purple Heights and ''Slippy McGee," Mrs. Oemler is the author of "A Woman Named Smithy She Is southern woman of Irish and English extraction, and she lives with her family in Savannah Ga. SAMUEL LYLE, CRIMINoLOGIST' By Arthur Crabb. The Century Com
 pany, Publishers. New York City
 The hero of this series of clever mystery stories is Samuel Lyle. law yer by profession, unravellcr of baf- fling tangles by avocation. He fol- lows his avocation with the Keen en- thusiasm that man gives to his hobby and the reader cannot fail to catch something of the same tenseness as lie follows the master mind along obscure trails
 Lawyers. particularly will be pleased with the authors sure grasp Of legal matters. while any brain worker will find rest and relaxation in abandoning himself to the spell of the