New Releases by Van Wyck Mason

#7 in the Hugh North series.

Down Shanghai''s famous Bund swept the red tide of terror -- until Captain North discovered the secret of the four copper coins, of the dying man who whispered, "Carol''s doll," and of the murderer whose goal was an empire!

Captain Hugh North of the Army Intelligence has had a strange career, but no part of it compares to the peril and excitement with the case of the branded spy, and the singular chain of murders that, following it, threaten the peace of the world. From the beautiful girl found dead near an Hawaiian beach, with an inexplicable mark branded on her neck, North finds the threads that lead to the far corners and great capitals -- Paris, Washington, Moscow ... and to criminals whose ruthless daring is matched only by their cunning!

Armchair fiction presents extra-large paperback editions of the best in classic science fiction novels. F. Van Wyck Mason''s "Phalanxes of Atlans" is the twenty-fourth installment of our "Lost World-Lost Race Classics" series. A lost world in the wilds of the Arctic! Only in dim legends did mankind remember Atlantis and the Lost Tribes, that is, until Victor Nelson''s extraordinary adventure into the Arctic unknown. Nelson and his pal, Richard Alden, had been forced down during a flight over a previously unexplored Arctic region. Their situation was desperate. And when Alden became lost, Nelson knew it was only a matter of time before his pal would perish in the Arctic cold. But when he found traces of a bloody struggle, Nelson knew Alden had been taken-forcibly. But by who¿and why? Soon Nelson found himself following a trail into a forgotten world-a world filled with prehistoric beasts and lost Atlantean civilizations. And it was in this fantastic realm that Victor Nelson soon found the adventure of a lifetime.

Colonel Hugh North’s wildest andmost baffling assignment leads to Zanzibar Intrigue! The Hugh North series is “high powered . . . unflagging entertainment!” (The New York Times).

MAN FROM G-2 MEETS GIRL FROM MI-2 Lady Angela Forester -- fair, vivacious, voluptuous -- and Colonel Hugh North -- rugged agent from G-2 -- made a handsome couple as they sipped their drinks in a plush London restaurant. The one-time lovers had met accidentally and were now renewing the glorious days of old. But something was different, Hugh kept telling himself. Angela had changed.... It was only after Hugh North set out on his dangerous and delicate mission to Tangier -- with Angela at his side -- that he learned his lovely girlfriend was now an important MI-2 agent! "Quite exciting!" —Chicago Sunday Tribune

The Reds would give a spire off the Kremlin to lay hands on Dr. Hans Bracht, America''s foremost missile genius. And here he was on a Bangkok-bound plane with only G-2''s Colonel North to guard him. The plane''s passenger list made North sweat: MARY HOLLBERG, a shapely Fraulein who said she was a concert pianist but obviously wasn’t; CHU HOONG, multimillionaire manufacturer of Dragon''s Tooth Elixir; LITA NALINE, an exotic, sloe-eyed film star who developed a sudden affection for Colonel North; BORIS SALENKOV, who resembled Stalin in more ways than his mustache; LEX ROSE, a Hollywood executive and once a card-carrying Commie. Looking at them, Colonel North knew that murder would be the least of his troubles...

MAN FROM G-2 MEETS GIRL FROM MI-2Lady Angela Forester -- fair, vivacious, voluptuous -- and Colonel Hugh North -- rugged agent from G-2 -- made a handsome couple as they sipped their drinks in a plush London restaurant. The one-time lovers had met accidentally and were now renewing the glorious days of old. But something was different, Hugh kept telling himself. Angela had changed ... It was only after Hugh North set out on his dangerous and delicate mission to Tangier -- with Angela at his side -- that he learned his lovely girlfriend was now an important MI-2 agent!""Quite exciting!""--Chicag.

"Third machine gun gangster dies!" came the newsboy''s cry through the window of Judge Mackaye''s stately residence in Deptford. A group of men were gathered there -- powers in the life of the city, and before sundown two of them lay dead on the broad lawns of Deptford Manor, another was on the point of death, and Captain Hugh North of Army Intelligence was to take control. Murder stalked the quiet New England city -- murder whose roots lay in a strange, bizarre tangle. Murder dogged Judge Mackaye''s footsteps, hounded his lovely daughter. And murder uncovered another, more terrible tragedy before it was finally checked!

In the bay of Cienfuegos, a little Cuban town, the naked body of a D.C.I. officer was found floating one night. And the next, Captain North of the Army Intelligence was on his way there -- with orders to find the facts. The wolves of the naval powers were already gathering at Cienfuegos around a cashiered American naval officer who had developed a new and mysterious invention. And beside the agents were the great international criminals always drawn by such an affair. The first intimation of the sinister undercurrents North was facing came on the night train in Cuba -- when a drab-looking German was murdered almost before his eyes, with a glass dagger thrust into the heart. At Cienfuegos the real battle began, with danger lurking in the surrounding jungle, and within the house death striking with silent arrows -- so much quieter than automatics, so much easier to use from a distance than knives...

When Mr. Wallace was found neatly suspended from a hook in the bathroom ceiling, with a slender chain around his neck and the wastebasket on which he had stood carefully kicked away, there seemed little doubt of it. Especially as there was a note in the dead man''s handwriting saying, "I am worried, tired, and sick of heart. Why go on with this senseless struggle? Disgrace faces me." But -- why was the sheet on which the note was written shorter than all the other sheets on the desk? Where had the three seeds that come from that were found near the body, and why should Wallace, partner in a brokerage house, have chosen the beginning of a merry Long Island house party to have committed suicide? Captain North, late of the American Intelligence Service, saw these things, and they puzzled him. Before that dreadful night was over, death struck again, and the terrified house guests knew that in their midst was a killer -- cold blooded, ruthless, efficent -- and always the three white seeds followed in his wake ... a symbol of death!

Captain Hugh North, D.C.I., arrived at Fort Espato (in English, "Fort Terror") with no thought of treasure or tragedy -- but both awaited him there. An American army port superseded the old ruin now, but when the Spanish controlled the Philippines, it had been an ill-fated and much-used fort. Some legendary menace hung over its somber vaults and passages, but when two men vanished into its depths one evening and did not reappear, North saw only a living hand where others saw inexplicable terror. To track the killer who not only murdered but caused his victims to disappear completely baffled even Captain North, until he found the beads with the markings that did not match, and a bit of paper in a dead man''s hand!

F. Van Wyck Mason (1901-1978) was an American historian and novelist. He had a long and prolific career as a writer spanning 50 years and including 65 published novels. Few today realize that he wrote for the pulp magazines of the early 20th century, in a variety of genres. This science fiction novel appeared in the pulp magazine Astounding Stories (under the byline "F.V.W. Mason") in 1931. Mason''s vivid characterization and exciting action, typical of his later best-selling mystery and historical novels, are evident here as well.

The recovery of a treasure from a sunken Spanish galleon, based on actual events in the early life of Sir William Phips, an eventual governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony.

The adventures and exploits of the Paddock family of Nantucket during the great days of sperm whaling in the mid-nineteenth century.

Many-charactered novel of the last years of the American Revolutionary War with its bloody, hate-filled battles.

A story of the first 8 years of the settlement of Georgia in the 1730''s under the extraordinary leadership of General Oglethorpe.

Anthology of the best war stories and excerpts from war novels, chosen from the works of Mailer, Michener, Shaw, Dos Passos and many others.