'I've thought of a game," said my cousin Julian.

"What kind of a game?" I asked.

"A different kind of game," Julian said. "We've never played it before."

It was a hot day and they had al¬ready seen the movie at the only theater in town. Yet the game that Julian devised to relieve the boredom--the game of Takers and Returners--was to affect the lives of all the children who took part in it.

Julian was fifteen, and thirteen¬-year-old Ellen had always thought she might marry him someday--that is until Mother explained that first cousins could not marry. Julian still had a kind of fatal fascination, though. It made you want to follow his leadership. Otherwise, they would never have let the game get out of hand the way it did, for it was an un usual, frightening game, and one of which the adults would not have approved.

In this skillfully written suspense story, Carol Beach York provides an atmosphere so full of tension and anxiety that it becomes almost un¬bearable, and the reader soon realizes that it is also a story of evil and that the game the children play is one no one can win.