Fiction: Best Books

Christmas is house-cleaning time for booksellers. The publishers remit their flood of new titles while shelves are cleared, ledgers audited for the new year. Readers may now reconsider the past year's output, check what they have read, what they have missed, what they might give as presents. Following is a list designed to be helpful:

ACT OF DARKNESS—John Peale Bishop—Scribner ($2.50).

ALL THE YOUNG MEN—Oliver La Farge—Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).

ANOTHER CAESAR—Alfred Neumann— Knopf ($3).

BUTTERFIELD 8—John O'Hara—Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

CHANCE HAS A WHIP—Raymond Holden—Scribner ($2.50).

CLAUDIUS THE GOD AND HIS WIFE MESSALINA—Robert Graves—Smith & Haas ($3).

DEEP DARK RIVER—Robert Rylee— Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

EUROPA— Robert Briffault— Scribner ($2.75).

EXPRESS TO THE EAST—A. den Doolard—Smith & Haas ($2.50).

FISH ON THE STEEPLE— Ed Bell— Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

THE FURYS— James Hanley— Macmillan ($2.50).

HEAVEN'S MY DESTINATION—Thornton Wilder—Harper ($2.50).

HONEY IN THE HORN—H. L. Davis— Harper ($2.50).

A HOUSE DIVIDED—Pearl S. Buck— Day ($2.50).

IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE—Sinclair Lewis —Donbleday, Doran ($2.50).

JOURNEYMAN—Erskine Caldwell—Viking ($4-50).

LUCY GAYHEART— Willa Cather— Knopf ($2).

'NATIONAL VELVET''—Enid Bagnold— Morrow ($2.50).

OF TIME AND THE RIVER—Thomas Wolfe—Scribner ($3).

ONE LIGHT BURNING—R. C. Hutchinson—Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

PATHS or GLORY—Humphrey Cobb—Viking ($2.50).

PYLON—William Faulkner— Smith & Haas ($2.50).

THE ROYAL WAY—André Malraux— Smith & Haas ($2.50).

SEEDS OF TOMORROW— Mikhail Sholokhov—Knopf ($2.50).

A SIGN FOR CAIN—Grace Lumpkin— Furman ($2.50).

THE STARS LOOK DOWN—A. J. Cronin—Little, Brown ($2.50).

TIME : THE PRESENT—Tess Slesinger— Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE— B. Traven—Knopf ($2.50).

VEIN OF IRON—Ellen Glasgow—Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

THE VOICE OF BUGLE ANN—MacKinlay Kantor—Coward-McCann ($1.25).

THE WORLD FROM BELOW—Jules Romains—Knopf ($3).

Non-Fiction

AN ALMANAC FOR MODERNS—Donald Culross Peattie—Putnam ($3).

ASYLUM—William Seabrook—Harcourt, Brace ($2).

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN HAYS HAMMOND—Farrar & Rinehart ($5).

BEAUMARCHAIS—Paul Frischauer—Viking ($3.50)

BLACK RECONSTRUCTION—W. E. Burghardt Du Bois—Harcourt, Brace ($4.50).

BLACK TENTS OF ARABIA—Carl R. Raswan—Little, Brown ($4).

BYRON : THE YEARS OF FAME—Peter Quennell—Viking ($3.50).

CATHERINE, THE PORTRAIT OF AN EMPRESS—Gina Kaus—Viking ($3.50).

THE CRISIS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS— Lewis Corey—Covici, Friede ($2.50).

DON FERNANDO—W. Somerset Maugham—Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

EUROPEAN EXPERIENCES—Mabel Dodge Luhan—Harcourt, Brace ($3.75).