Mrs. Skinner’s new novel has for its heroine a most piquant and delightful American girl, who, at the age of sixteen, falls in love with a Russian prince.  He is a man of lofty character with a serious purpose in life and devotes his energies to political journalism.  The course of true love runs anything but smoothly.  The story is full of action and incident, and has especial interest through its warmth and color, its pictures of life in Russia and the humanness of its characters.  “A novel of purpose as well as an enchaining romance.”—­Springfield Union.

Appleton’s Recent Books

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THE MYSTERY OF THE SECOND SHOT.

By Rufus Gillmore.  Illustrated with Pen-and-Ink Sketches by Herman Heyer. 12mo.  Cloth, $1.25 net.  Postpaid, $1.37.

Bertrand Newhall, a scheming Boston banker, gets control of an old, reliable trust company, wrecks it to bolster up another business, and disappears.  Police and reporters hunt him in vain.  As Ashley, a reporter, is “combing” the neighborhood of Newhall’s home for evidence, a young girl draws him inside a house, where he finds the banker dead, a pistol beside him.  The police call it suicide, but Ashley thinks differently, and ultimately he solves a problem quite new in the annals of crime.

THE NAMELESS THING.  By Melville Davisson Post, author of “The Gilded Chair,” etc.  Illustrated. 12mo.  Cloth, $1.25 net.  Postpaid, $1.37.

A thrilling mystery story.  The queer death of a recluse in his library is the main theme.  There is absolutely no clue, and the mystery is doubled by the fact that, although the room is shot up and in the greatest disorder, both windows and door are found locked on the inside—­the man dead in a pool of his own blood.  The clearing up of this mystery leads the reader through many exciting adventures.  “Something exceptional in the way of detective stories.  It is such stories as these that dignify the art of fiction writing.”—­Boston Transcript.

THE TREVOR CASE.  By Natalie S. Lincoln.  Illustrated by Edmund Frederick. 12mo.  Cloth, $1.30 net.  Postpaid, $1.42.

One of the most ingenious and exciting detective novels of recent years.  The scene is Washington.  The beautiful young wife of the Attorney-General is found murdered.  A burglar is caught leaving the house, but incriminating evidence points to other people high in official and political life.  There is a bewildering conflict of clues and a series of startling climaxes before the case is cleared up.  Not one reader in fifty can guess the ending.