The infant Clayton, subsequently adopted by the she-ape Kala, is named Tarzan ('White Skin' in the ape language) and is raised in ignorance of his human heritage.

The ape man, feeling rootless in the wake of his noble sacrifice of his prospects of wedding Jane Porter, leaves America for Europe to visit his friend Paul d'Arnot.

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, a grand gesture that convinces his antagonist of his innocence.

During the past decade, Alexis Paulvitch, who had escaped Tarzan at the end of the last novel, has lived a hideous life of abuse and disease among tribal people in Africa.

After the trauma of the kidnappings ten years earlier, Jane had refused to return to Africa or to allow their son Jack to know anything about his father's past for fear that he might somehow try to relive it.

In the year 1914, while John Clayton, Lord Greystoke (Tarzan) is away from his plantation home in British East Africa, it is destroyed by invading German troops from Tanganyika.

In attempting to track Jane, Tarzan has come to a hidden valley called Pal-ul-don filled with dinosaurs, notably the savage Triceratops-like Gryfs, which, unlike their prehistoric counterparts, are carnivorous and stand 20 feet tall at the shoulder.

The lost valley is also home to two different adversarial races of tailed human-looking creatures: the hairless and white skinned, city-dwelling Ho-don and the hairy and black-skinned, hill-dwelling Waz-don.

Two years passed since the Clayton family picked up their lion cub, and the Greystoke estate had become financially depleted due his support of the Allies war efforts, and he concluded it was time to return to Opar for another withdrawal.

Queen La, who had come into disfavor with the high priest, felt she had nothing to lose by escaping with Tarzan through the only unguarded route—a path to the legendary valley of diamonds, from which no one had ever returned.

Tarzan befriends the king, Adendrohahkis, and the prince, Komodoflorensal, of one such city-state, called Trohanadalmakus, and joins them in war against the onslaught of the army of Veltopismakus, their warlike neighbours.

The Veltopismakusian scientist Zoanthrohago conducts an experiment reducing Tarzan to the size of a Minunian, and the ape-man is imprisoned and enslaved among other Trohanadalmakusian prisoners of war.

Tarzan, his monkey friend Nkima, and Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors prevent Russian communists from looting the lost city of Opar.

Backed by Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors, Tarzan faces Soviet agents seeking revenge and a lost tribe descended from early Christians practicing a bizarre and debased version of the religion.

To create additional havoc, a Hollywood film crew sets out to shoot a Tarzan movie in Africa and brings along an actor who is an exact double of the apeman himself, but is his opposite in courage and determination.

An amnesiac Tarzan and his monkey companion Nkima are taken by an African warrior to be his guardian spirits, and as such come into conflict with the murderous secret society of the Leopard Men.

Tarzan cared little for the fate of adventurer Brian Gregory, drawn to the legendary city of Ashair by the rumor of the Father of Diamonds, the world's hugest gem.

But to the ape-man the tie of friendship was unbreakable, and Paul d'Arnot's pleas moved him to agree to guide the expedition Gregory's father and sister organized for his rescue.

under his civilian name of John Clayton during World War II, Tarzan is shot down over the island of Sumatra in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies.

The first half of The Mad King is set before the African visit, and focuses on the brother, finding out that they are related to the royalty of a small kingdom between Austria and Serbia.

The second half is set after the African visit as the brother returns to the European kingdom on the eve of World War I. Tarzan does not appear in these two stories, although the sister from Eternal Lover does.

Following The Lost Adventure, the Burroughs estate authorized Philip Jose Farmer to write an official Tarzan novel, released in 1999 as The Dark Heart of Time.

Stonecraft hires hunters to track and capture Tarzan for the secret, leading to a conflicts at the "City Built by God" and the "Crystal Tree of Time".

Tarzan, after concealing his true identity of Lord Greystoke from Jane Porter, journeys from Wisconsin north to Canada and uncovers an ancient civilization of Vikings.

King Kong vs. Tarzan (2016): Will Murray's authorized novel details the encounter between the giant ape (shipwrecked in Africa while being transported from Skull Island to New York) and the apeman.

In Win Scott Eckert's authorized novel, Tarzan returns to the Earth's core on a mission to stop Nazis from obtaining a powerful super weapon.

At the end of Tarzan And The Jewels Of Opar (1918), the fifth book in the twenty-four-book series, Burroughs writes, "Lord and Lady Greystoke with Basuli and Mugambi rode together at the head of the column, laughing and talking together in that easy familiarity which common interests and mutual respect breed between honest and intelligent men of any races."

Burroughs' opinions, made known mainly through the narrative voice in the stories, reflect attitudes widely held in his time, which in a 21st-century context would be considered racist and sexist.

Some defenders of the Tarzan series argue that some of the words Burroughs uses to describe Africans, such as "savage," were generally understood to have a different and less offensive meaning in the early 20th century than they do today.

He also fought a great variety of monsters, vampires and invaders from outer space infesting the African jungles, and discovered several more lost cities and cultures in addition to the ones depicted in the Burroughs canon.