Nobody could accuse TERROR TALES, or any of the other Weird Menace pulps, for that matter, of being subtle and restrained. That's certainly true of this cover by John Howitt, which is one of the more lurid that I recall. The lineup of authors inside this issue is pretty much an all-star one for this genre: Hugh B. Cave, Wyatt Blassingame, Wayne Rogers, Paul Ernst, Nat Schachner, and James A. Goldthwaite writing as Francis James. All those guys wrote other things, too, of course, but they were prolific and well-regarded contributors to the Weird Menace pulps.
Since we had a little snow here recently, this seemed like a good time to post the cover from an issue of NORTH-WEST ROMANCES. And of course, it's always a good time to post a Norman Saunders cover, although I wouldn't put this one in the absolute top rank of his work. It's still dynamic and eye-catching, though. I don't own this issue, but it looks like a good one with stories by William Heuman, Archie Joscelyn, and Curtis Bishop (all best remembered for their Westerns but perfectly capable of writing excellent Northerns, as well), along with lesser-known authors Paul Selonke, Michael Oblinger, William Rush, Francis James (who was really the very prolific James A. Goldthwaite), and Q.C. Nindorf. I always enjoy Northerns and really need to read more of them.
SINISTER STORIES was the shortest-lived of Popular Publications' Weird Menace pulps, lasting only three issues in 1940. All three issues recycled covers from TERROR TALES. This one is particularly racy. I don't know the artist. The stories were all new, as far as I can tell. The best-known authors in this issue, at least these days, are Russell Gray (who was really Bruno Fischer) and Robert Leslie Bellem. Some of the others were familiar names to Weird Menace fans, though, such as Donald Dale (Mary Dale Buckner) and Francis James (James A. Goldthwaite), while Raymond Whetstone, William Brailsford, and Richard G. Huzarski are all pretty obscure, at least to me. SINISTER STORIES came along at the tail-end of the Weird Menace era, or it might have lasted longer. It certainly doesn't look like a bad pulp for that genre.
