Altus Press Announces Its New Releases for the 2017 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention

Altus Press is pleased to announce its line of Spring 2017 releases, headlined by the Series 3 of The Argosy Library, which comprises ten collections from the pages of the Frank A. Munsey Company pulps. Other releases include new issues of Famous Fantastic Mysteries—containing an all-new story by Doc Savage creator Lester Dent—as well as another issue of Black Mask Magazine—which includes a never-published story by Carroll John Daly. The long-awaited Secret Agent X: The Complete Series, Volume 8 also premieres, as well as the well-researched Leo Margulies: Giant of the Pulps—His Thrilling, Exciting, and Popular Journey, written by the great pulp editor’s nephew, Philip Sherman.

All of Altus Press’ new releases will premiere at the 2017 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention in Lombard Illinois, on April 21.

For more information, please read on:

---

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (The Argosy Library #21)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs, introduction by Vernell Coriell

Deep in the African interior lies the remote refuge called Opar. Ruled by the beautiful High Priestess La, who commands an army of savage beast-men, this hidden colony is the last survival of long-sunken Atlantis.

Tarzan of the Apes had dared penetrate Opar in the past. Now he must brave her bestial defender once more on a desperate mission. For the Lord of the Jungle needs the fabulous jewels of Atlantis for his own purposes. But how can he wrest this treasure from Queen La, whose burning desire is to enslave the ape-man as her coveted mate?

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar is the fifth in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ world-famous adventure series. This Altus Press edition marks the first time the original Argosy version of this thrilling tale has been reprinted since 1916.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was the imaginative and prolific creator of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars and Carson of Venus, and is considered one of the most important literary discoveries ever to appear in the pages of Argosy and other Munsey magazines.

196 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

Clovelly (The Argosy Library #22)

by Max Brand

Michael Clovelly might not have been the greatest swordsman ever to come to London town during the reign of the Merry Monarch, Charles the Second, but if a better man ever wielded a blade, he had not yet stepped forth to claim the distinction.

Seeking gold with which to elevate his beggarly fortunes, Clovelly chances to encounter a bully, and his fierce swordwork brings him to the attention of Lord Teynham, who has need of a resourceful man with a rapier. The commission: to turn highwayman and rob a certain coach. The reasons? They are both murky and mysterious. But they have to do with a certain lady of impeccable character…. Since his belly is empty, Clovelly dares the hangman’s noose for a certain sum of gold—and barges into more strife and intrigue than he bargained for.

Max Brand was the personal pen name of Frederick Schiller Faust, one of the most prolific writers who ever lived. The creator of characters as diverse as Whistling Dan Barry, Destry and Dr. Kildaire, Faust specialized in Westerns, but also contributed to other genres. He wrote more that five hundred stories, but Clovelly is one of his rare cloak and sword swashbucklers.

247 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

War Lord of Many Swordsmen: The Adventures of Norcross, Volume 1 (The Argosy Library #23)

by W. Wirt

The World War was over, its fighting finished. But not for Captain John Norcross of the American Expeditionary Force. He considered the Armistice a waste of good soldiers. So he welded together the best of his men to lead a regiment of the fightingest black soldiers who ever tore up the trenches. These were men born and bred for battle. Red McGee. Billy Gray. George Gunnell. Patton. The Boston Bean. The Fighting Yid. Corporal “Yaller” Coudray. Corporal “Delicate” Moss. And scores of others—one hundred and fifty strong.

Into wild western China with its bandits and feuding warlords, Captain Norcross marched his force. Their objective: A simple brass tube. Yet what it contained would prove priceless to the right parties. But first they would have to face a Zulu army—in the heart of China! Then there was the complication of the fugitive Manchu princess they happened to collect along the way….

William Wirt was a prolific writer of two-fisted adventure stories, renowned for his Argosy tales of mercenary Jimmie Cordie. His professional life was shadowy, and he claimed to have worked for the United States Secret Service, as had his father before him. Few today doubt Wirt’s credentials, for the quality and authenticity of his writing has stood the test of time.

218 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

Alias the Night Wind (The Argosy Library #24)

by Varick Vanardy

Bingham Harvard is the true identity of the mysterious midnight marauder known only as the Night Wind. Possessed of inhuman physical strength, he battles crooks and cops alike, motivated by the soul-crushing tragedy of being framed on a criminal charge he did not commit.

Alias the Night Wind introduces this proto-superhero who becomes as a law unto himself dedicated to the hot pursuit of swift justice. All while being hounded by the New York police force—and especially by clever undercover detective Kate Maxwell, whose special assignment is to bring in the notorious Night Wind.

Varick Vanardy was the pseudonym of prolific dime-novel producer Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey, the author of over one thousand Nick Carter stories. His Night Wind novels were written for The Cavalier magazine during the last years of Dey’s amazing writing career, as dime novels gave way to the new pulp magazine field pioneered by Argosy.

254 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

The Blue Fire Pearl: The Complete Adventures of Singapore Sammy, Volume 1 (The Argosy Library #25)

by George F. Worts

Sailor Singapore Sammy Shay roamed the South Seas, desperate to find the father he neither knew nor loved. For reckless old Bill Shay had absconded with the only copy of a will that left all of his own father’s worldly riches to Sammy alone. Singapore Sammy didn’t know why, and he didn’t care particularly. He just wanted to get his hands on that precious document. He had only two clues to go on: his old man loved pearls and elephants—in that order. When Sammy came into possession of the fabulous Malobar pearl, he realized that he had something to bargain with. If only he could track down the elusive Bill Shay….

So begins the exotic adventures of Singapore Sammy Shay as he knocked around the backwater ports of the South Seas, seeking his lost fortune and usually finding himself in scalding hot water.

In his youth, George Frank Worts had been a telegraph operator on ships making the China run when he turned his experiences in Asia into some of the most memorable escape fiction ever to appear of the pages of Argosy magazine.

The volume collects the first five stories in the saga of Singapore Sammy Shay and Lucky Jones of the schooner, Blue Goose.

284 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

The Moon Pool & The Conquest of the Moon Pool (The Argosy Library #26)

by Abraham Merritt, introduction by Will Murray, illustrated by Virgil Finlay

Surrounded by crumbling Cyclopean ruins, the Moon Pool was a place of both horror and wonder. No Polynesian race had constructed it. Sacred yet accursed too, the spot was far older then recorded history. As was the luminous thing that dwelt within its unfathomable depths, a transcendent being summoned from its ancient slumber by the cold rays of the full moon.

Against this vampiric force beyond human comprehension, a group of brave scientists and adventurers takes up the challenge and confronts the unholy power known only as the Shining One. But even they do not suspect that behind this awesome apparition lurks ever more stupendous wonders left over from a prehuman age when superscience and elder sorcery were indistinguishable from one another.

A. Merritt was one of the pioneers in the field of science-fantasy fiction. A Munsey magazine mainstay, he electrified readers of All-Story Weekly when it published “The Moon Pool” in 1918. The hunting tale of supernatural wonder created a sensation that led to a novel-length sequel, The Conquest of the Moon Pool. This Altus Press volume collects for the first time the original unrevised versions of these now-classic tales, illustrated by the incomparable Virgil Finlay.

448 pages | $29.95 softcover | $39.95 hardcover

---

The Gun-Brand (The Argosy Library #27)

by James B. Hendryx

Through Chloe Elliston’s veins coursed the reckless blood of her world-roving ancestor, the legendary “Tiger” Elliston. Tiger Ellison, the seaman who had built a fleet of cargo steamers that tramped the whole wide world. Tiger Elliston, scourge of pirates from the South Seas to distant Asia.

With her entourage, Harriett Penny and the Amazonian Big Lena, the granddaughter of Tiger Elliston had come to the northland to move freight up the Slave River and make her own fortune. But north of 60 is a hard, raw land, one where women did not readily fit in. Not even the fearless offspring of a human tiger. For here Chloe would become embroiled in a bitter feud between “Brute” McNair—“the Bad Man of the North” and the free-trader named Pierre Lapierre. Dare she trust one over the other? And which one?

James B. Hendryx was a prolific author who lived the kind of life mirrored in his fictional heroes. A Minnesota native, he had prospected in the Yukon, been a cowboy in the U.S. West and Canada, as well as serving a stint is a newspaper reporter. In his time, Hendryx was considered one of the premier authors of a popular genre now all but extinct—the “Northern.”

265 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

Jan of the Jungle (The Argosy Library #28)

by Otis Adelbert Kline

Led to believe that his natural mother is a chimpanzee, a young boy knows only the savage ways of the great apes. Kept in a cage, he is systematically trained to become a savage killer by the fiendish Dr. Bracken. The target of Bracken’s rage is none other than the woman who spurned him—the orphan boy’s own mother!

After fate causes him to be shipwrecked on the coast of Venezuela, the feral youngster, accompanied by his surrogate mother, Chicma the chimp, escapes into the jungle and discovers a strange land inhabited by prehistoric dinosaurs and primitive man-monsters. Transformed by contact with the beautiful Ramona, the teenaged beast-boy learns the ways of civilization and becomes Jan of the Jungle!

Otis Adelbert Kline was a popular Argosy writer in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He specialized in planetary romances set on Mars and Venus, so it was inevitable that he would follow in Burroughs’ literary footsteps by creating a version of Tarzan of the Apes to call his own. Jan of the Jungle reappeared in the Argosy sequel, Jan in India, and was adapted as a 1935 Universal serial, Call of the Savage.

220 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

Minions of the Moon (The Argosy Library #29)

by William Grey Beyer

Move over, Buck Rogers!

When Mark Nevin was put under general anesthetic, he expected to wake up minus his appendix. That was all. To his shock and horror, he discovered himself 6,000 years in the future, long after mankind had referred back to savagery.

Fortunately for Mark, the surgeon who accidentally placed him in suspended animation carefully laid him in a crypt containing all the means for survival available in the 20th century. And he would need them, for he was about to plunge into a world more dangerous and primitive in the long-dead one he had known. And Mark Nevin would not be alone. There was the beautiful Nona Barr. And the mysterious Omega, a disembodied moon-mind with the personality of a mischievous child yet possessing the transformative power of a god. Not to mention assorted cannibals and an actual dragon.

William Gray Beyer was a Philadelphia railroad worker and policeman who moonlighted writing fiction. His first effort, the whacky and whimsical Minions of the Moon, proved so popular that he brought back Mark Nevin for several more Argosy installments, including Minions of Mercury and Minions of the Shadow.

183 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

Drink We Deep (The Argosy Library #30)

by Arthur Leo Zagat

Nestled in the Heidelberg Hills of New York State lies Lake Wankoona. Beneath its tranquil blue surface broods another world, a place inhabited by a race of beings unknown in human history.

Impelled by an eerie summons he cannot comprehend, archeologist Hugh Lambert is drawn into the lake’s placid depths—and into a vortex of unreality. There, he encounters the unearthly Little Men, who work their scientific necromancy upon the cold corpses of those who had the misfortune to fall into the lake’s uncanny bottomlessness. There, also, he meets the coldly beautiful and cruelly enthralling Nalinah, and learns of a sinister scheme to conquer the Upper World—with he, himself, destined to be in the vanguard!

Arthur Leo Zagat was famed as “The Horror Story Man,” owing to his numerous Weird Menace stories written for Terror Tales and similar magazines of horror. But Zagat also proved capable of writing quality fantasy fiction in the style of A. Merritt, as he proved in the pages of Argosy magazine with memorable novels such as the classic Seven Out of Time and the haunting Drink We Deep.

256 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

Black Mask (Spring 2017)

by Carroll John Daly, Roger Torrey, Richard Sale, T.T. Flynn, Frank Gruber, Cyril Plunkett, William R. Cox, and others

The greatest pulp magazine of all time returns with another issue, headlined by an all-new story by Carroll John Daly, the creator of Race Williams.

110+ pages | $14.95 softcover

---

Famous Fantastic Mysteries (Spring 2017)

by Lester Dent, H.M. Appel, Ray Cummings, Paul Ernst, Hugh B. Cave, Arthur J. Burks, Francis James, and others

Another installment of the classic fantasy title, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, featuring a brand new, never-before published story by Lester Dent, the creator of Doc Savage! Also featuring several stories from the Popular Publications archives.

110+ pages | $14.95 softcover

---

Leo Margulies: Giant of the Pulps—His Thrilling, Exciting, and Popular Journey

by Philip Sherman

Pulp magazines written initially for boys in the first half of the Twentieth Century dominated the industry with stories about cowboys and Indians, science fiction, and adventure. They were written by such illustrious authors as Louis L’Amour, Ray Bradbury, L. Ron Hubbard, and Isaac Asimov, with a readership of tens of millions, for 10 cents a copy. The best-known editor of this era was Leo Margulies, editor-in-chief of Standard Magazines – The Thrilling Group. During one period, he bought two million words a month. He edited more than 70 magazines and was, for a time, the highest-paid pulp magazine editor in the country.

Leo Margulies: Giant of the Pulps—His Thrilling, Exciting, and Popular Journey, by his nephew, Philip Sherman, includes stories by members of his family, friends, and writers, about his generosity and encouragement to so many.

Dr. Sherman’s extensive research draws largely upon correspondence records from university archives, including University of Oregon, Northern Arizona University, Boston University, and Texas A&M University, and many others, and from journals such as Writers’ Digest and Author & Journalist. He talked and wrote to writers and others who knew his uncle and of course drew upon his own family’s personal experiences with this remarkable man.

354 pages | $19.95 softcover | $29.95 hardcover

---

Secret Agent X: The Complete Series, Volume 8

by G.T. Fleming-Roberts and Wayne Rogers, introduction by Tom Johnson

For 41 issues from 1934 to 1939,Secret Agent “X” battled the forces of evil in the pages of his own pulp magazine. Now, for the first time… the complete pulp series is being reprinted in nine deluxe omnibus editions! The text has been reset and all the original interior illustrations have been remastered. This volume contains the next five stories, by G.T. Fleming-Roberts and Wayne Rogers: “Slaves of the Scorpion,” “Satan’s Syndicate,” “The Assassins’ League,” “Plague of the Golden Death” and “Curse of the Mandarin’s Fan.” This is the Secret Agent “X” reprint series to own!

432 pages | $29.95 softcover | $39.95 hardcover