Coming Soon: The ARGOSY LIBRARY from Altus Books

We take time out from our Continental Op tribute to share this great news from Altus Press. Pretty dang soon (hopefully by May) Altus will roll out the first ten books of their ARGOSY LIBRARY. Argosy was one of the best of the pulps, and all these books look good. Even cooler, there will be many more to come.

Here's the word from the official press release:

     Founded at the end of the Nineteenth Century by publishing tycoon Frank A. Munsey, Argosy Magazine quickly became one of the most popular—and prestigious—fiction magazines of its day and spawned a publishing revolution.
     Known as one of the most literate pulp magazines, Argosy published thousands of short stories and novels, many of which features some of the most influential series characters in popular fiction.
     With the inauguration of The Argosy Library, Altus Press plans to bring back into print the best of the Frank A. Munsey Company, sourced from its suite of sibling titles such as Argosy, The All-Story, and Flynn’s Detective Fiction Weekly, among others.
     The Argosy Library expects to showcase the varied mix of genres that made Argosy one of the most popular pulps of all time, and Series 1 does just that by showcasing adventure, mystery, western, science fiction, fantasy, and crime stories by some of Munsey’s most popular authors such as Lester Dent, W. Wirt, Otis Adelbert Kline, W.C. Tuttle, George F. Worts, and Theodore Roscoe, among others.
     The Argosy Library will be released in series of ten books at a time—in matching trade dress—and will be available in softcover, hardcover, and ebook editions. In addition to being available separately, each series of releases can be purchased as a single, heavily-discounted set.
 

And here are the first ten books:

The gold-dusted saga of a red-bearded young giant, raised in the Arctic on seal-meat and encyclopedias, who descends on civilization with a loud and solid crash. In his search for wisdom and adventure, the man Jones doesn’t have Aladdin’s lamp—but he doesn’t really need it…. Never before reprinted, it’s the longest novel Lester Dent ever published, and one of the most famous. This edition restores text cut from its original publication. With an Introduction by Will Murray. (Evan here: I've been waiting a LONG time for this one.)



Once voted Adventure Magazine’s most popular author, W.C. Tuttle introduced the world to one of his longest-running, and most popular series characters, Henry Harrison Conroy, in the pages of Argosy. Collected here are the first four stories. Introduction by Sai Shankar.



Harry Thorne, explorer and swordsman, had scarcely more than heard of the Red Planet, Mars—when an amazing thing happened…. Otis Adelbert Kline is well-known as one of the best fantasy/adventure contemporaries of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This edition is sourced from the original magazine text and includes all of the original illustrations.

Mystery runs rampant in the quiet, upstate New York town of Four Corners…. Easily one of Roscoe’s best-written series, Volume 1 collects the first half of this lost masterpiece of the pulps. 

Trees of living gold in the Amazon jungles, guarded by alligators, poisoned darts and rival hunters—such was the lodestone that drew an American expedition, and the unwilling Pete Holcomb….  

’Twas the mightiest weapon the eyes of man had ever beheld; its mystic name meant “Ruler of Briton.” And from over the Northern Sea came a Viking’s thrall—the only man in the world who could wield that fearsome steel—to save good King Alfred and the homeland he scarce remembered. Collecting—for the first time—all 12 stories of the Bretwalda saga.

The sagas of Jimmie Cordie and his crew were among Argosy’s most popular series when it was brought to that magazine during its early ’30s renaissance. Quite clearly an inspiration for the creation of Doc Savage, this edition collects his first nine adventures. 

A groundbreaking science fiction, post-apocalyptic & time travel classic from the early days of The All-Story by an underrated writer. 

When Jim Fallon started for the Hudson Bay country, he wasn’t sure whether he was on a man-hunt or a wild goose chase—but he found his quest was fraught with real enough peril. Among the best novels ever written by one of Argosy’s most popular authors. 

One of Argosy’s most popular authors pens this never-before reprinted novel of a trail of crime that ran from sleepy Maple Hollow to Steel City.