Best of the Paperbacks

Fact:

The Tiger Of Chtn By

Leonard Cottrell. Everyone knows that China is one of the oldest civilisations; few know how it began as a nation. At the time that Rome was emerging victorious from the First Punic War, in 200 BC, and when Britain was a semi-barbarous island on the outer fringe of Europe, China, already with a millenium of civilisation behind it, was united under the Emperor Shih-huang-ti.

Cottrell, former documentary writer and war correspondent for the BBC, has been interested in archaeology and ancient history since a child and since 1949 has written half a dozen books on his pet subjects. (Pan Piper; 6/-).

The Nine Days Of Dunkirk

by David Divine. Reviewers of this book, when it was first published, in 1959, regarded it as the “standard account of the tremendous event”. (Pan; 8/-).

THE DALTON GANG by Harold Preece. Real life (and death) story of the last of the American West’s bad men. Illustrated. (New American Library; 6/-).

Odd:: SPECTRUM—I, an anthology of science fiction, selected and edited

by Kingsley (Angry Young Man) Amis and Robert Conquest. (Pan; 8/-).

Fiction;

The Beach Of Passionate

LOVE by G. M. Glaskin; THE

Mysterious Pregnancy By

Nigel Heseltine; and THE TURN OF THE WHEEL by Roger Vail land, all deal with that horrible bogey—Sex—in different dimensions and in different places. The first in the French countryside; the second amongst the existentialists of Paris; the third on the east coast of Malaya. (Four Square; all 6/-).

Field Of Women By Alan

Caillou. About the unexpected pro blems encountered by an American engineer who tries to bring an im poverished Italian village back to prosperity only to find that the village prefers to go on earning its living through its beautiful women. (Signet; 6/9).

The Years Of Alison By

Warren Chetham Strode, better known as a playwright and part icularly of The Guinea Pig. (Fontana).

Thrillers And Crime: SYLVIA and PHYLLIS, both by E. V. Cunningham (which is a pseudonym of someone allegedly better known). Both are of the plumbing-the-human-depths type; the first is a suspense story about a plot to destroy New York and Moscow; and the second of a man’s search into the past of a beautiful woman. (Pan; 6/- & 4/-).

Poison Ivy And Dark

BAHAMA both by Peter Cheyney

(Fontana); Call For The Saint

by Leslie Charteris (Hodder), all with standard equipment at 4/- each.

Missing From Home Is By

John Creasey, writing as Michael Halliday, for Hodder; and DEATH IN COLD PRINT is by John Creasey, as himself, for Pan. Both 4/-.

Deadly Welcome By John D.

Macdonald (Pan) and YOU CAN’T

Do Business With Murder

by Don von Eisner, (Signet) are from the tough American school. 41- each.

Pan and Fontana books from Wm.

Collins (Overseas) Ltd.; Four Square and Signet from Tudor Distributors Ltd., Sydney: Hodder books from Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., Sydney.)

The owl and the pussy-cat went tc sea in a beautiful pea-green boat They took some honey and plenty of money wrapped up in a five pound note . . .

They sailed away for a year and t day to the land where the bont tree grows . . .