Return of Tarzan, The (Unabridged)

Written by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Narrated by Ralph Nelson

The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs - is a novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the second in his series of twenty-four books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published in the pulp magazine New Story Magazine in the issues for June through December 1913; the first book edition was published in 1915 by A. C. McClurg.

Plot summary
The novel picks up soon after where Tarzan of the Apes left off. The ape man, feeling rootless in the wake of sacrificing his prospects of wedding Jane Porter, leaves the United States for Europe to visit his friend Paul d'Arnot. On the ship he becomes embroiled in the affairs of Countess Olga de Coude, her husband, Count Raoul de Coude, and two men attempting to prey on them, Nikolas Rokoff and his henchman Alexis Paulvitch. Rokoff, it turns out, is also the countess's brother. Tarzan thwarts the villains' scheme, making them his deadly enemies.

In France, Rokoff repeatedly tries to eliminate the ape man, finally engineering a duel between him and the count by making it appear that he is the countess's lover. Tarzan deliberately refuses to defend himself in the duel, even offering the count his own weapon after the latter fails to kill him with his own. This gesture convinces the count of Tarzan's innocence. In return, Raoul finds him a job as a special agent in the French ministry of war. Tarzan is assigned to service in Algeria.

A sequence of adventures among the local Arabs ensues, including another brush with Rokoff. Afterward, Tarzan sails for Cape Town and strikes up a shipboard acquaintance with Hazel Strong, Jane's best friend. Also aboard are Rokoff and Paulovitch, who manage to ambush Tarzan and throw him overboard.
Miraculously, Tarzan manages to swim to shore and finds himself in the coastal jungle where he grew up. He soon rescues and befriends a native warrior, Busuli of the Waziri tribe, which adopts the ape man. After defeating a raid on their village by ivory raiders, Tarzan becomes their chief.

The Waziri know of a lost city deep in the jungle, from which they have obtained their golden ornaments. Tarzan has them take him there, but is captured by its inhabitants, a race of ape-like men, and is condemned to be sacrificed to their sun god. The priestess to perform the sacrifice is a beautiful woman who speaks the ape language Tarzan learned as a child. She tells him she is La, high priestess of the lost city of Opar. When the sacrificial ceremony is interrupted, she hides Tarzan and promises to lead him to freedom. But the ape man escapes on his own, locates a treasure chamber, and manages to rejoin the Waziri.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Golden Classic Audiobooks
• Release date: Aug 28, 2023

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) is the creator of Tarzan, one of the most popular fictional characters of all time, and John Carter, hero of the Barsoom science fiction series. Burroughs was a prolific author, writing almost 70 books before his death in 1950, and was one of the first authors to popularize a character across multiple media, as he did with Tarzan’s appearance in comic strips, movies, and merchandise. Residing in Hawaii at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, Burroughs was drawn into the Second World War and became one of the oldest war correspondents at the time. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s popularity continues to be memorialized through the community of Tarzana, California, which is named after the ranch he owned in the area, and through the Burrough crater on Mars, which was named in his honour.