Alcatraz is a classic western novel by the great western author Max Brand. "He was perfect of that type of cowboy which she detested most: handsome, lithe, childishly vain in his dress. About his sombrero ran a heavy width of gold-braid; his shirt was blue silk; his bandana was red; his boots were shop-made beauties, soft and flexible; and on his heels glittered--gilded spurs "

BLOOD 'N THUNDER #41 begins with a report on this year's Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention. "Tricks of the Trade" offers an article by Arthur Burks, "speed merchant of the pulps," on an occupational hazard to fictioneering. "Pulp Page to Silver Screen" explores the 1931 Western TRAILIN', based on a Max Brand novel serialized in ALL-STORY WEEKLY. "Cliffhanger Classics" covers a bizarre 1935 serial THE LOST CITY. Our feature articles include a survey of the short-lived but memorable Munsey pulp ALL-AMERICAN WEEKLY, and Larry Latham's overview of dime novel heroes adapted to the movies....

Beside the rear window of the blacksmith shop Jasper Lanning held his withered arms folded against his chest. With the dispassionate eye and the aching heart of an artist he said to himself that his life work was a failure. That life work was the young fellow who swung the sledge at the forge, and truly it was a strange product for this seventy-year-old veteran with his slant Oriental eyes and his narrow beard of white. Andrew Lanning was not even his son, but it came about in this way that Andrew became the life work of Jasper.

It was characteristic of the two that when the uproar broke out Vance Cornish raised his eyes, but went on lighting his pipe. Then his sister Elizabeth ran to the window with a swish of skirts around her long legs. After the first shot there was a lull. The little cattle town was as peaceful as ever with its storm-shaken houses staggering away down the street.

By careful tailoring the broad shoulders of Ben Connor were made to appear fashionably slender, and he disguised the depth of his chest by a stoop whose model slouched along Broadway somewhere between sunset and dawn. He wore, moreover, the first or second pair of spats that had ever stepped off the train at Lukin Junction, a glowing Scotch tweed, and a Panama hat of the color and weave of fine old linen. There was a skeleton at this Feast of Fashion, however, for only tight gloves could make the stubby fingers and broad palms of Connor presentable. At ninety-five in the shade gloves were out...

SOME time ago I was dining with four distinguished writers. Needless to say where two or three authors are gathered together with a sympathetic editor in their midst, the flood-gates of fancy are opened wide.