Books: The Editors Like

THE PICNICATSAKKARA by. P. H. Newby. (Knopf. $1.25.) Set in Egypt in the last days of royal rule, this comic novel concerns a mild but stubborn English professor and his troubles with his wife, a local grande dame, and a terrorist student.

A TALE FOR MIDNIGHTby Frederic Prokosch.(Tittle, Brown, $3.95.) Mr. Prokosch retells I he gruesome story of the Cenei, that Renaissance hair-raiser, with conviction, an extraordinary evocation of landscape and personality, and a properly haunting effect.

THE WALKERby Patrick O’Brian. (Harcourt, Brace, $3,50.) Twenly-five short stories by an Irish author who frequently finds his subjects outside Ireland and has unusual gifts of characterization, description, and, on occasion, pure, classic horror.

STATUESby George Molnar. (Dutton, $2.50.) Outrageously amusing cartoons, showing how to use statuary for furniture, housing, companionship, and both sides of a civil war. Also how to defend yourself from statues and from dullness.

FRENCH DRAWING OF THE XVI CENTERYwith text and notes by Jean Adhémar, (Vanguard, $12.50.) A comprehensive, handsome collection of 99 reproductions with a brisk, informative text. A very nice book indeed on a somewhat neglected period.

EPSTEIN: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. (Dutton, $6.00.) Sir Jacob Epstein is rather reserved about his personal life, unexpectedly restrained in discussing the controversies of which his sculpture has been the center, and most interesting on the meaning of his work and the many exceptional people he has known, or modeled, or worked with. Photographs.

THE GAME OF HEARTS: MEMOIRS OF HARRIETTE WILSON, edited and with an introduction by Lesley Blanch. (Simon & Schuster, $5.00.) Miss Wilson was a notorious courtesan of Regency London, and her memoirs were a scandalous success in their day. They were also pretty garrulous. Pruned of excess rhetoric by Miss Blanch. Harriette is delightful reading, a witty, mischievous social historian.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, MARINERby Samuel Eliot Morison. (Atlantie-Little, Brown, $3.75.) A short biography of the great explorer, just as good as one would expect from the author of Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

MR. SECRETARY CECIL VXD QUEEN ELIZABETHby Conyers Read. (Knopf, $7.95.) The life of William Cecil, that great and wily statesman who was administrator and adviser to Elizabeth I, necessarily involves the life of the queen as well. Mr. Read does justice to an amazing partnership.

THE CRÉCY WARby Lt. Col. Alfred H. Burne.(Oxford I Diversity Press, $7.00.) While carefully explaining the early stages of the Hundred Years’ War, this military history clanks along in gay and picturesque style. Good history and good fun.