The Pirate Island by D E Heming, 1938.

A chance find in the local Oxfam Bookshop. I shall review it gradually, so this is a brief stub to get started. My copy has blue boards, no dust-jacket - if anyone can supply photo, please do via comments.Size 81/4 by 6 inches, 13/4 thick, 248 pages. There is an embossed four-armed propeller. The title page attributes authorship to D.E. Heming.  In saying "author of The Phantom Wing" by way of advertisement, D E Heming is identified with "Guy Dempster", the author's name given in that book in this series, a popular Heming 'brand' when writing gory war stories for boys. The name "Dempster Heming" was used for the popular Peter Clayton books. The name D E Heming was also used for The Girls Book of Heroines and The Boys Book of Heroes, two books best forgotten.

A further advertisement lists "other books in the Air Adventure Series - three by husband Jack (Heming) and three others by Eileen  as Dorothy Carter (Flying Dawn), James Cahill (Flying with the Mounties) and Guy Dempster (The Phantom Wing). The other books are by other writers John Grant (a story of India), M.E. Miles and Michael Cronin. The latter's son-in-law Peter Nethercot writes (for which I am very grateful):  Michael Brendon Leo Cronin 1907-1987 was my father in law. He also wrote under the names of David Miles and M.E. Miles (his wife's maiden name). He was educated at Queens College, Dublin and after graduating joined the Royal Air Force as a school teacher. On the outbreak of the second world war he transferred into the provost branch, and from there to special branch. Most of his writing took place after the war which is well documented.

Air Adventure Series, A&C Black, 1935-8

This post comes from a chance find in a Southwold second-hand bookshop, The Pirate Island by D.E. Heming (1938). The page stating it as part of a series, and naming the other titles, makes this a most interesting story.
First there are three books by Jack Heming, a minor writer of boys' school stories. They are:The Desert Air Raider, The Air-Dope Hunters, The Air Spies. Sixth in the series is Flying Dawn by Dorothy Carter, which I happen to have. This was one of her first books, maybe the first - the first of 120 books or so to follow using 16 different names. She was Jack Hemings' wife and sometimes wrote under her real name D(orothy) E(ileen) Heming. "D E Heming"  used for The Pirate Island (the D was for Dempster) links her to Guy Dempster, also in this series. The title page identifies D E Heming as the author of this Guy Dempster title. The story goes (based on her fictionalised autobiography One Woman's Life) that when penniless, Jack spoke to someone in London who said 'Air adventures are where the new money is' - so he and his wife had a go, and took their manuscripts in to a publisher in London. He not only agreed to publish, but commissioned more.

Then came James Cahill, Flying with the Mounties, clearly set in Canada: this was also by Dorothy Heming, taking the name from distant family menbers. There were several Canadian adventures written by her in the 1930s, though she had never been to Canada. Many were about flying, and at this stage neither had she flown an airoplane, though her descriptions have fooled many. [There is a mysterious books Ted of the Mounties by Eileen Heming, and North for Treasure by Dorothy Carter set in Canada but published long after her (1948) death]. Then there is The Phantom Wing, by Guy Dempster, another Dorothy Heming name - a remarkably different book, as others using this pseudonym, set on active service with the Fleet Air Arm - including blood-curdling and blood-letting accounts of battle.

There are three other names, unrelated as far as I know to the Heming clan - John Grant, writing on India ("A thrilling adventure novel of a quest for gold in India that turns into a desperate attempt by Richard Challenger to free his father, Col. Challenger, retired, from the clutches of the infamous Emir Din and his impenetrable stronghold" (blurb). Then two by M.E.Miles (Airplane Base and Pirates of the Air) ; and Michael Cronin's The Flying Kidnappers - again no connection that I know of, and occasional copyright library ascriptions identify this Michael Cronin with the prolific post-war crime writer of that name, born 1907. His real name was Brendan Leo Cronin and since he also wrote under the name David Miles, I presume that he was M.E. Miles also (see comments below for confirmation).

So, A and C Black got together this small group of prolific young writers to quickly put together a contribution to air adventures that were otherwise dominated at that time by W.E. Johns' Biggles. Indeed the illustrator Alfred Sindall also illustrated Biggles' stories.