Fiction: Recent Books: Apr. 12, 1937

THE FRIENDLY TREE—Cecil Day Lewis —Harper ($2.50). A first-novel love story whose greensick sentimentality Poet Lewis' revolutionary U. S. rooters will regret was not obscured in his less telltale verse.

SON OF HAN—Richard Lapiere—Harper ($2.50). Laid in 19th Century China, the quiet but well written story of a talented youth whose efforts to become a scholar are sacrificed to the customs of family worship.

PEACE IS WHERE THE TEMPESTS BLOW —Valentine Kataev—Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50). The story of two boys who become involved in the 1905 Russian Revolution when they hide a fugitive from the mutinous cruiser Potemkin; by the author of Time, Forward!

HERO BREED — Pat Mullen — McBride ($2.50). Author Mullen (Man of Aran) keeps his heroine out of the way to the end so as to give plenty of room for his hard-hitting, quick-tempered Irish fishermen and smugglers.

BEAT TO QUARTERS—C. S. Forester— Little, Brown ($2.50). Expert sea yarn in which an English frigate fights it out with a 50-gun Spanish warship on a strange mission to South America in Napoleon's day.

Non-Fiction I WANTED WINGS—Beirne Lay Jr.— Harper ($2.50). The education of a U. S. Army flyer at Randolph and Kelly Fields, Texas. Spirited, informative reading.

OLD Fuss AND FEATHERS—Arthur D. Howden Smith—Greystone ($4). Biography of Winfield Scott, 6 ft. 4½ in. hero of the War of 1812, the Indian Wars and the Mexican War, credited with training the best officers of the Union and Confederate armies and with never losing a military engagement, never winning a political one.

THE COMPLETE DIALOGUES OF PLATO (2 Vols.)—Translated by Benjamin Jowett—Random House ($5). Well-printed, sturdy edition (facsimile of the third and latest) of Jowett's classic translation, with all marginal notes, at one-fifth the usual price.

A DICTIONARY OF SLANG AND UNCONVENTIONAL ENGLISH — Eric Partridge — Macmillan ($12.50). Scholarly and gallant 999-page attempt to list the flood of "colloquialisms and catchphrases, solecisms and catachreses, nicknames, vulgarisms and such Americanisms as have been naturalized" (40,000 entries in all) by an English lexicographer.