The Blue Book Magazine, May 1917

The Blue Book Magazine, May 1917 This issue features fourteen short stories and two serials. Notable contributors include Will Payne ("Explaining the Villain"), Edgar Rice Burroughs ("The Nightmare," a Tarzan tale), James Francis Dwyer, John Fleming Wilson, George Washington Ogden, Ellis Parker Butler, and Albert Payson Terhune. Story premises range from Washington intrigue to rural romance and frontier adventure. "Explaining the Villain" opens with a Senator meeting the President regarding a crisis involving a leaked report about the "Bronx affair" with implications for national security. Other stories include college athletics, a cabaret girl adjusting to farm life, and a Kansas churn salesman's courtship. Two serials run: "Alias Mrs. Blair Coulter" by Henry M. Neely and "Ransom!" by Arthur Somers Roche. A novelette, "It's a Bear" by Putnam and Jacobsen, concerns a tenderfoot in Wyoming. The issue also advertises Zane Grey's upcoming serial "The Roaring U.P. Trail."