Fiction: Recent Books: Oct. 23, 1939

THE SILENT DUCHESS—Anne Green—Harper ($2.50). Unusually trustworthy times-&-manners fiction about France be fore the Revolution, by the sister of Julian Green. Miss Green's Duchess breaks silence in old age to describe her century with a fine grandmotherly wit, telling her tales about as well as they are told in the sources (Saint-Simon, Voltaire, et al).

HUDSON REJOINS THE HERD—Claude Houghton—Macmillan ($2.50). Convalescent Stephen Hudson drearily, dreamily tries to figure out why Millionaire Otto Steele shot him on second meeting. The fretful reader is apt to regret that it wasn't a clean killing.

Non-Fiction

MAUD—Edited by Richard Lee Strouf—Macmillan ($3.50). The...