Books: The Editors Like

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUNby Riccardo Bacchelli. (Pantheon, $4.50.) Sequel to The Mill on the Po, the story of a clan of tough river millers covers politics, economics, peasant superstitions, and builds up a vivid picture of the beginnings of modern Italy.

BATH TANGLEby Georgette Heyer. (Putnam, $3.50.) A conglomeration of queer legacies, elopements, and cross-purpose romances in Regency England, cleverly plotted and full of quiet chuckles.

THE ROARING BOYSby Robert Payne. (Doubleday, $3.95.) Gaudy, improbable, sporadically brilliant novel about Shakespeare, endearing for its old-fashioned assumption that Will wrote his own plays.

A LETTER FROM LI POby Conrad Aiken.(Ox ford University Press, $3.50.) Civilized, elegant poems with a slight Chinese bias, circling around the themes of passing time and enduring art.

THE FLOWERS OF EVILby Charles Baudelaire. (New Directions, $6.00.) Baudelaire put into English by a number of translators, which precludes any steady focus on his style but provides good versions of individual poems. French text included.

POET IN NEW YORKby Federico García Lorca, translated by Ben Belitt. (Grove, $3.75.) Rather desperate attempt to move a most difficult poem from Spanish into English, plus some bits of Lorca’s prose and an introduction by Angel del Rio, well worth reading.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSONedited by Thomas H. Johnson. (Harvard University Press, 3 vols., boxed, $25.00.) A truly monumental affair. All the surviving poems, all variant versions, and a wealth of detail on dates, circumstances, references. Indispensable for scholars and enthusiasts.

MR. GOULD’S TROPICAL BIRDSedited and with an introduction by Eva Mannering. (Crown, $7.50.) Delightful reproductions of plates from various books by a British contemporary of Audubon, specializing in tropical birds.

SALAMANDERS AND OTHER WONDERSby Willy Ley. (Viking, $3.95.) Mr. Ley, a collector of odd information with a gift for making the most trifling matters fascinating, has a go at pygmies, legendary trees, and the Abominable Snowman, as well as the reptiles of the title.

THE VOICE OF THE DESERTby Joseph Wood Krutch. (Sloane, $3.75.) A subtle, sympathetic author discusses the plants and animals he has observed in Arizona, with an engaging drift toward philosophy.