The Custer Siblings Series

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Description

From the masterful author of The Tarzan Series, Edgar Rice Burroughs, this thrilling adventure collection features the fantastical stories of valiant siblings, Victoria and Barney Custer.

Set over 100,000 years ago, a brave caveman warrior is deeply in love with the beautiful Nat-ul. Revered by the tribesmen, Nat-ul could have anyone she wanted, but her love for Nu is as great as his for her. When an earthquake strikes the prehistoric African land, Nu is trapped inside a cave. When he emerges, he finds he has been transported to the twentieth century. In this frightening modern world, Nu meets the reincarnation of his lost love, Victoria Custer. The Eternal Lover (1914) travels forward and back in time as Nu and Victoria fall in love and find themselves tangled in adventure. Sweetheart Primeval (1915) continues their story as the characters encounter prehistoric beasts, meet Tarzan, and navigate a centum millenium love triangle.

Victoria’s brother, Barney Custer, features in his own adventure novel, The Mad King (1914). The young American has no idea that he is the son of a princess. When he goes to visit his mother’s homeland, the fictional European kingdom of Lutha, it’s revealed that he is almost an exact doppelganger for the country’s King. Barney is mistaken for the monarch, which leads to a long string of comedically disastrous events.

This volume includes all four of the Custer Siblings novels, featured in their original publication order:

- The Eternal Lover

- The Mad King

- Sweetheart Primeval

- Barney Custer of Beatrice

First released between 1914 and 1915, these fantasy-adventure novels have been republished in a new, complete collection and would make the perfect read for fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan books.

Sujets

• Time Travel
• Science Fiction
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528798457
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Custe r Siblings Series
THE ETERNAL LOVER, THE MAD KING, SWEETHEART PRIMEVAL, & BARNEY CUSTER OF BEATRICE
By
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS







Copyright © 2021 Read & Co. Classics
This edition is published by Read & Co. Classics, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


Contents
Edgar Rice Burroughs
THE ETERNAL LOVER
The Eternal Lover Part One
I NU OF T HE NIOCENE
II THE EARTHQUAKE
III NU, THE SLEEP ER, AWAKES
IV THE MYSTERI OUS HUNTER
V T HE WATCHER
VI NU AN D THE LION
VII VICTORIA OBEY S THE CALL
VIII CAPTURE D BY ARABS
IX NU GOES TO F IND NAT-UL
X ON THE TRAIL
XI THE ABDUCTION
XII THE CAVE MAN FIND S HIS MATE
XIII INTO THE JUNGLE
THE MAD KING
The Mad King Part One
I A RUN AWAY HORSE
II OVER THE PRECIPICE
III AN ANGRY KING
IV BARNEY FIND S A FRIEND
V THE ESCAPE
VI A KIN G'S RANSOM
VII AL LEOPOLD
VIII THE CORO NATION DAY
IX THE KIN G'S GUESTS
X ON THE B ATTLEFIELD
XI A TIMELY IN TERVENTION
XII THE GRATITUDE OF A KING
SWEETHEART PRIMEVAL
The Eternal Lover Part Two
I AGAIN A WORL D UPHEAVAL
II BACK TO THE STONE AGE
III THE GREAT CAVE-BEAR
IV THE BOA T-BUILDERS
V NU'S FI RST VOYAGE
VI THE ANTHR OPOID APES
VII THE B EAST-FIRES
VIII BOUND TO THE STAKE
IX THE FIGHT
X GRON 'S REVENGE
XI T HE AUROCHS
XII TUR'S DECEPTION
XIII NAT-UL IS HE ART-BROKEN
XIV "I HAVE COME TO SAVE YOU"
XV WHAT THE CAV E REVEALED
BARNEY CUSTER OF BEATRICE
The Mad King Part Two
I BARNEY RETURN S TO LUTHA
II CONDEMNE D TO DEATH
III BEFORE THE FI RING SQUAD
IV A RAC E TO LUTHA
V THE TR AITOR KING
VI A TRAP IS SPRUNG
VII BARNEY TO THE RESCUE
VIII AN ADVEN TUROUS DAY
IX T HE CAPTURE
X A NEW KIN G IN LUTHA
XI THE BATTLE
XII LEOPOLD WAIT S FOR DAWN
XIII THE TWO KINGS
XIV "THE KING'S WI LL IS LAW"
XV MAENC K BLUNDERS
XVI KIN G OF LUTHA


Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in Chicago in 1875. His father, a Civil War veteran, sent him to Michigan Military Academy in his youth, but in 1895 Burroughs failed the entrance exam for the US army, and was then discharged from the military altogether in 1897 having been diagnosed with a heart problem. Following this, Burroughs worked in a range of unrelated short-term jobs, such as railroad policeman, business partner, and miner. In 1911, having worked for seven years on menial wages, and having taken an interest in the pulp magazines of the day, Burroughs began to write fiction. Some years later, he recalled thinking that “although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those m agazines.”
Only a year later, Burroughs' story 'Under the Moons of Mars' was serialized in All-Story Magazine, earning him $400 (approximately twenty times that by modern-day economic standards). This money enabled Burroughs to start writing full-time and in the same year (1912), he published his successful and most well-known work – Tarzan of the Apes. Tarzan was a national sensation, and Burroughs showed an entrepreneurial streak when he exploited it in a range of different ways, from comics to movies to merchandise. By 1923, Burroughs had founded his own company – Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. – and printed his own books throughout the rest of his life.
During World War II, as a resident of Hawaii at the time of the Pearl Harbour attack, Burroughs became one of the oldest war correspondents in the US. After the war, Burroughs moved back to California, where he eventually died of a heart attack, leaving behind more than sixty novels. The figure of Tarzan remains immensely popular, and today the original 1912 novel has almost innumerable sequels across all forms of media.




Bookplate designed for Edgar Rice Burroughs by his nephew, Studley Oldham Burroughs, in 1922.




1922 letter between Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ruthven Deane that describes the details of the bookplate's design and their relevance.


THE ETE RNAL LOVER
The Eter nal Lover Part One
First published in All-Story Weekly , March 7th, 1914


I
NU OF T HE NIOCENE
Nu the son of Nu, his mighty muscles rolling beneath his smooth bronzed skin, moved silently through the jungle primeval. His handsome head with its shock of black hair, roughly cropped between sharpened stones, was high held, the delicate nostrils questioning each vagrant breeze for word of Oo, hunt er of men.
Now his trained senses catch the familiar odor of Ta, the great woolly rhinoceros, directly in his path, but Nu, the son of Nu, does not hunt Ta this day. Does not the hide of Ta's brother already hang before the entrance of Nu's cave? No, today Nu hunts the gigantic cat, the fierce saber-toothed tiger, Oo, for Nat-ul, wondrous daughter of old Tha, will mate with none but the mightiest o f hunters.
Only so recently as the last darkness, as, beneath the great, equatorial moon, the two had walked hand in hand beside the restless sea she had made it quite plain to Nu, the son of Nu, that not even he, son of the chief of chiefs, could claim her unless there hung at the thong of his loin cloth the fa ngs of Oo.
"Nat-ul," she had said to him, "wishes her man to be greater than other men. She loves Nu now better than her very life, but if Love is to walk at her side during a long life Pride and Respect must walk with it." Her slender hand reached up to stroke the young giant's black hair. "I am very proud of my Nu even now," she continued, "for among all the young men of the tribe there is no greater hunter, or no mightier fighter than Nu, the son of Nu. Should you, single-handed, slay Oo before a grown man's beard has darkened your cheek there will be none greater in all the world than Nat-ul's mate, Nu, the s on of Nu."
The young man was still sensible to the sound of her soft voice and the caress of her gentle touch upon his brow. As these things had sent him speeding forth into the savage jungle in search of Oo while the day was still so young that the night-prowling beasts of prey were yet abroad, so they urged him forward deeper and deeper into the dark and trackless mazes of the tangl ed forest.
As he forged on the scent of Ta became stronger, until at last the huge, ungainly beast loomed large before Nu's eyes. He was standing in a little clearing, in deep, rank jungle grasses and had he not been head on toward Nu he would not have seen him, since even his acute hearing was far too dull to apprehend the noiseless tread of the cave man, moving lightl y up wind.
As the tiny, blood-shot eyes of the primordial beast discovered the man the great head went down, and Ta, ill-natured and bellicose progenitor of the equally ill-natured and bellicose rhino of the twentieth century, charged the lithe giant who had disturbed his antediluvian m editation.
The creature's great bulk and awkward, uncouth lines belied his speed, for he tore down upon Nu with all the swiftness of a thoroughbred and had not the brain and muscle of the troglodyte been fitted by heritage and training to the successful meeting of such emergencies there would be no tale to tell today of Nu of th e Niocene.
But the young man was prepared, and turning he ran with the swiftness of a hare toward the nearest tree, a huge, arboraceous fern towering upon the verge of the little clearing. Like a cat the man ran up the perpendicular bole, his hands and feet seeming barely to touch the projecting knobs marking the remains of former fronds which converted the towering stem into an easy stairway for s uch as he.
About Nu's neck his stone-tipped spear hung by its rawhide thong down his back, while stone hatchet and stone knife dangled from his G-string, giving him free use of his hands for climbing. You or I, having once gained the seeming safety of the lowest fronds of the great tree, fifty feet above the ground, might have heaved a great sigh of relief that we had thus easily escaped the hideous monster beneath; but not so Nu, who was wise to the ways of the creatures of his r emote age.
Not one whit did he abate his speed as he neared the lowest branch, nor did he even waste a precious second in a downward glance at his enemy. What need, indeed? Did he not know precisely what Ta would do? Instead he swung, monkey-like, to the broad leaf, and though the chances he took would have paled the face of a brave man today they did not cause Nu even to hesitate, as he ran lightly and swiftly along the bending, swaying frond, leaping just at the right instant toward the bole of a nearby jun gle giant.
Nor was he an instant too soon. The frond from which he had sprung had scarce whipped up from beneath his weight when Ta, with all the force and momentum of a runaway locomotive, struck the base of the tree head on. The jar of that terrific collision shook the earth, there was the sound of the splintering of wood, and the mighty tree toppled to the ground with a deafen ing crash.
Nu, from an adjoining tree, looked down and grinned. He was not hunting Ta that day, and so he sprang from tree to tree until he had passed around the clearing, and then, coming to the surface once more, continued his way toward the distant lava cliffs where Oo, the man hunter,