ruts laid down by conventional society for women’s lives.

DE MEJO, OSCAR. Diary of a Nun. pbo Pyramid 1955. Just what it sounds like—fictional diary of a young girl in a convent warding off scandalous advances. Mediocre.

+ DENNIS, NIGEL FORBES. Cards of Identity. Vanguard, 1955. Hilarious novel of confused identity, dealing with both male and female homosexuality.

DES CARS, GUY. The Damned One. pbo Pyramid, 1956. A member of French aristocracy, ambiguously sexed enough to be classified as female at birth, grows up unequivocally male but retains the name, dress and character of a female to avoid scandal—which comes anyhow when she carries on with an eccentric Englishwoman.

DEUTSCH, DEBORAH. The Flaming Heart. Boston, Bruce Humphries, 1959, (m).

DEVLIN, BARRY.

Acapulco Nocturne. Vixen Press, 1952.

Cheating Wives. Beacon pbo 1959 (copyright 1955).

Fire and Ice. Vixen Press, 1952.

Golf Widow. Vixen Press, 1953.

Lovers and Madmen. Vixen Press 1952.

Madame Big. Vixen Press 1953.

Moon Kissed. Green Farms, Conn. Modern Pubs 1957, Vixen Press 1953, pbr tct Forbidden Pleasures Beacon Books 1959.

Too Many Women. Vixen(?) 1953, Beacon pbr 1959.

These are all the same sort of thing, evening wasters or scv, depending on taste. Big handsome men of incredible stamina, engaging incessantly in that one activity besides which all else, is as naught, with a succession of beautiful women, blonde, brunette and redhead. Now and then this procession of affairs is varied a little by letting the girls sport with one another to give the heroes a breathing spell. In short sexy books for people who like reading sexy books. Adults only, please.

DE VOTO, BERNARD. Mountain Time. Little, Brown & Co 1946—47, fco. One very brief overt lesbian episode.

DE VRIES, PETER. The Tents of Wickedness. Little, Brown & Co, 1959, Minor episode in a very funny literary satire—Army colonel who talks pure Hemingway turns out to be a WAC in disguise.

DIBNER, MARTIN. The Deep Six. Doubleday 1953, pbr Permabooks 1957, (m).

DIDEROT, DENIS. Memoirs of a Nun. (trans from French by Frances Birrell). London, Rutledge & Sons 1928, hcr London, Elek Books, Book Centre Ltd, N. Circular Road, Neasdon, London, N. T. 10, England. Classic French novel La Religieuse, written in 1760, published in 1796, Reflects the very bitter anti-clerical sentiment of the times just before the Revolution. A “cornerstone” title.

DINESEN, ISAK. Seven Gothic Tales. N. Y., Smith & Haas, 1943, hcr Modern Library n.d.

“The Invincible Slave Owners”, ss in A Winter’s Tales, Random House 1942.

DIXON, CLARISSA. Janet and her dear Phebe. Stokes, 1909. Girls story of two loving little chums, separated by a misunderstanding between their families, and re-united as women. Though never explicit, the story is emotional and intense. It is highly unlikely the author was quite, aware of the type of attachment she was portraying.

DJEBAR, ASSIA. The Mischief. Simon & Schuster 1958, pbr Avon 1959 tct Nadia. Very brief but well-written novel of a young girl who falls in love with a former schoolgirl friend, now married.

+ DONISTHORPE, SHEILA. Loveliest of Friends, Claude Kendall 1931, pbr Berkley 1956, 1957, 1958, due for another. Boyish Kim captivates young happy-housewife Audrey and wrecks her life. Preachy outburst against lesbians toward the end. Read it with a hanky handy. (Curiously enough, in spite of the anti-lesbian bias of the ending, and the overdone sentimentality of the Swinburnian writing, everybody seems to enjoy this one—all the Checklist editors included.)

DOWD, HARRISON. The Night Air. Dial Press, 1950, (m).

DRESSER, DAVID. Mardigras Madness. Godwin 1934. One lesbian episode in an evening waster about Carnival.

DRUON, MAURICE. The Rise of Simon Lachaume. Dutton, 1952; hcr as part of the trilogy The Curtain Falls, Scribner 1960. One episode in lengthy novel of a French family involves the duping of an elderly roue by a pair of young lesbians.

+ DU MAURIER, ANGELA. The Little Legs. Doubleday, 1941. Sad and devastating results from a long variant enslavement. “This is a lovely book if you enjoy crying, and I do,” says one reviewer.

DURRELL, LAWRENCE.

Justine. N. Y., Dutton, 1957.

Balthazar. N. Y., Dutton, 1958, (m).

Mountolive. N. Y., Dutton, 1959, (m).

Clea. N. Y. Dutton, 1960. The last volume of now-famous tetralogy, just released, winds up all of the loose ends of the other three. The lesbian element is minor, but all four novels are excellent.

EICHRODT, JOHN. “Nadia Devereaux”, ss in Sextet, ed by Whit & Hallie Burnett. N. Y., McKay Co. 1951.

EISNER, SIMON. (pseud of Cyril Kornbluth). The Naked Storm. pbo, Lion Library, 1952, 1956. Mixed bag of passengers on a transcontinental train, including a lesbian who tries to captivate a young girl and is murdered by another passenger to give her intended victim “a chance at real happiness with a man.”

ENGSTRAND, STUART. More Deaths than One. Julian Messner 1955, pbr Signet 1957. Mannish woman defending effeminate husband against charge of rape by kidnapping his victim and hiding her out, goes through a nervous breakdown involving a morbid and macabre attachment to the girl; horrible.

Sling and the Arrow. Creative Age 1947, hcr Sun Dial n.d., pbr Signet ca. 1951, (m).

EMERY, CAROL. Queer Affair. pbo Beacon Books, 1957. Dancer Draga moves in with mannish Jo, runs into complications when she tries to desert Jo for a man. Evening waster but very good nevertheless ... the author got in some good attitudes and philosophies when the publisher wasn’t looking.

ENTERS, ANGNA. Among the Daughters. Coward McCann, 1955. Autobiographical novel of a girl who, like the author, finally becomes a dancer and choreographer. A good deal of space is devoted to a friendship between Lucy and another girl; the story is tinged with variance but never explicit.

ESTEY, NORBERT. All My Sins. A. A. Wyn, 1954. pbr Crest 1956. fco. Few very minor variant episodes in a long novel of the French courtesan Ninon l’Enclos.

EUSTIS, HELEN. The Horizontal Man. Harper 1946, pbr Pocket Books 1955. Offbeat psychological murder mystery.

EVANS, LESLEY. Strange are the Ways of Love. pbo Crest 1959. Love among the guitar-playing, folk-songing beatniks, with the lesbians playing Musical Beds. Evening waster.

EVANS, JOHN (pseud. of Howard Browne). Halo in Brass. Bobbs-Merrill 1949, pbr Bantam 1958. Hardboiled detective story; private eye Paul Pine is hired to locate runaway girl with no boy friends and many girl friends. Suspenseful, nice way to spend (not waste) a lazy evening.

EWERS, HANNS HEINZ. Alraune. John Day, 1929. Alraune is Evil incarnate—symbol of the Mandrake Root, destroying love in everyone with whom she