Books: Peculiar Horror

THE MOUNTAINS AND THE STARS— Valentin Tikhonov—Little, Brown ($2.50).

This accurate historical novel of Baron Ungern-Sternberg's last days is for readers whose literary will power is as strong as their stomachs. Written in the tradition of the conventional Russian novel, with almost eye-witness vividness, it ranks in intensity if not in scope with Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don, Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.

One of the last and most legendary of the White Russian counter-revolutionists rounded up by the Soviet Government was Baron Roman Fedorovich Ungern-Sternberg, diminutive, monstrously capricious, brilliant...