Books of the Fortnight

MEN ARE UNWISE -- Ethel Mannin -- Knopf ($2.50). Undistinguished novel about "lower middle-class" Londoners, done in a lower middle-class manner.

FAMILY CRUISE -- Helen Ashton -- Doubleday, Doran ($2.50). A Mediterranean cruise, family problems, happy endings. Author Ashton's Dr. Serocold promised better things.

FINNLEY WREN -- Philip Wylie -- Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50). A determined effort to make the story of a Manhattan advertising man something new and strange; a febrile failure.

KALEIDOSCOPE -- Stefan Zweig -- Viking ($3). Thirteen stories by an author who is clever but does not deserve to be confused with Arnold Zweig who wrote The Case of Sergeant Grischa.

TRUMPETER, SOUND! -- D. L. Murray -- Knopf ($2.50). Fiction up-to-date: Victorian London, an innocent actress, a dashing hussar. Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Shake well and add a pinch of salt.

ONCE A WILDERNESS -- Arthur Pound -- Reynal & Hitchcock ($2.50). A Michigan patriarch wields benevolent despotism over his broad acres. A comfortable ''realistic'' romance of U. S. farming before horsepower became invisible.

A GIRL BEFORE THE MAST -- Betty Jacobsen -- Scribner ($2). A Brooklyn stenographer tells of her trip on the Parma, winner of last year's grain race from Australia to England. No Cradle of the Deep, no Falmouth for Orders, either.

THE GORGEOUS HUSSY -- Samuel Hopkins Adams -- Houston Mifflin ($2.50). Historical romance about Peggy Eaton, the off-key belle of Washington in Andrew Jackson's day. by one of the Old Guard.

HERE TODAY AND GONE TOMORROW -- Louis Bromfield -- Harper ($2.50). Four long stories about what prolific but un-profound Author Bromfield calls "raffish people."

AFTER WORLDS COLLIDE -- Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie-- Stokes ($2). A thriller about life on a new planet; for those who are ashamed to be caught reading a detective story.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.