In this final (chronologically) Conan story, Howard demonstrates why he was one of the best adventure writers of all time. In the only novel he ever produced, Howard is able to maintain the blistering pace he is known for, while still weaving a complex and interesting tale. The story is set during Conan’s time as King of Aquilonia, which is a period in the hero’s life often overlooked.

Red Nails is the last of the stories about Conan the Cimmerian written by American author Robert E. Howard. A novella, it was originally serialized in Weird Tales magazine from July to October 1936. It is set in the pseudohistorical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan encountering a lost city in which the degenerate inhabitants are proactively resigned to their own destruction. Due to its grim themes of decay and death, the story is considered a classic of Conan lore and is oft...

The singing of the swords was a deathly clamor in the brain of Godric de Villehard. Blood and sweat veiled his eyes and in the instant of blindness he felt a keen point pierce a joint of his hauberk and sting deep into his ribs. Smiting blindly, he felt the jarring impact that meant his sword had gone home, and snatching an instant’s grace, he flung back his vizor and wiped the redness from his eyes.

Pigeons from Hell is a short story by Robert E. Howard written in late 1934 and published posthumously by Weird Tales in 1938. The story title derives from an image present in many of Howard’s grandmother’s ghost stories, that of an old deserted plantation mansion haunted by ghostly pigeons.

The dagger flashed downward. A sharp cry broke in a gasp. The form on the rough altar twitched convulsively and lay still. The jagged flint edge sawed at the crimsoned breast, and thin bony fingers, ghastly dyed, tore out the still- twitching heart. Under matted white brows, sharp eyes gleamed with a ferocious intensity.

San Leon lay as if slumbering in the desert heat as the five brothers rode up to the doors of the Cattlemen’s Bank. None noted their coming; the Red Lode saloon, favorite rendezvous for the masculine element of San Leon, stood at the other end of the town, and out of sight around a slight bend in the street.

Wings in the Night collects Robert E. Howard’s fiction and prose published in Weird Tales Magazine from July 1932 to May 1933. These works represent literary stepping-stones to Howard’s infamous Cthulhu mythos stories and his most famous character of all -- Conan the Cimmerian -- and ably demonstrate that each of Howard’s stories improved and added to his formidable skills as a master of fantasy and adventure.

In a world ruled by piracy, stalked by vampires, peopled by cities of the inhuman, he stood tall amid the terrors of the Dark Continent. Kane, a man of savage and unconquerable courage, strode deep into the jungles, forever slashing his diamond-edged rapier as evil guided the creatures of the night toward him. Wicked whispers of death touched him. Haunted horrors of the world beyond life reached for him. But Kane never halted his march, for he would never rest until the fin...

Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn. Into a dim alley, one of a veritable labyrinth of mysterious winding ways, four masked figures came hurriedly from a door which a dusky hand furtively opened. They spoke not but went swiftly into the gloom, cloaks wrapped closely about them; as silently as the ghosts of murdered men they disappeared in the darkness.

Shadows in the Moonlight is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written author Robert E. Howard and first published in Weird Tales magazine in April 1934. Howard originally named his story „Iron Shadows in the Moon”. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan escaping to a remote island in the Vilayet Sea where he encounters the Red Brotherhood, a skulking creature, and mysterious iron ...

The moonlight shimmered hazily, making silvery mists of illusion among the shadowy trees. A faint breeze whispered down the valley, bearing a shadow that was not of the moon-mist. A faint scent of smoke was apparent. The man whose long, swinging strides, unhurried yet unswerving, had carried him for many a mile since sunrise, stopped suddenly. A movement in the trees had caught his attention, and he moved silently toward the shadows, a hand resting lightly on the hilt of hi...

The Turks, cruelly lead by the scurrilous Bayazid, crushingly defeat a bunch of European Christians who were invading so as to steal land from the Turks, or something. But one of the Europeans, a Scott, Donald MacDeesa escapes with his life and hooks up with Ak Boga, who who had secretly been spying on the carnage. Ak Boga works for the Amir of Samarcand, one Timour the Lame.

The horror first took concrete form amid that most unconcrete of all things–a hashish dream. I was off on a timeless, spaceless journey through the strange lands that belong to this state of being, a million miles away from earth and all things earthly; yet I became cognizant that something was reaching across the unknown voids–something that tore ruthlessly at the separating curtains of my illusions and intruded itself into my visions.

In „Black Wind Blowing”, Howard lays it on so thick I half suspected he was trying to do a spoof on the genre. But then, his normal storytelling was always full of bizarre images, hyperactive violence and heavy use of adjectives so this story is probably just an extreme example. It helps too, that „Black Wind Blowing” has enough wild premises to build at least two or three effective horror stories on. If you’re not moved by what’s going on at the moment, by the next page th...

The creator of Conan looks to the stars in one of fantasy’s most enduring science fantasy classics! Robert E. Howard’s Almuric is a savage planet of crumbling stone ruins and debased, near-human inhabitants. Into this world comes Esau Cairn, Earthman, swordsman, murderer. Only he can overthrow the terrible devils that enslave Almuric, but to do so he must first defeat the inner demons that forced him to abandon Earth.

”I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer’s Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue...

If you like your horror with a western twist then these tales are for you. Awesome occult western adventure, from the master of strange fiction, Robert E. Howard! This collection includes the following stories: „THE HORROR FROM THE MOUND”, „THE MAN ON THE GROUND”, „OLD GARFIELD’S HEART”, „BLACK CANAAN”, „THE DEAD REMEMBER”, „PIGEONS FROM HELL” and others. Kind of like „Dreams at the Witch House” by Lovecraft but mixed with Howard’s own legends. „Tales of the Weird Southwest...

Despite an aversion to the detective formula, he wrote the tales in Graveyard Rats during the same years he chronicled the adventures of Conan. This collection features a new introduction by scholar Don Herron, editor of „The Dark Barbarian,” the definitive look at the life and work of Robert E. Howard.

The castles of the Twelfth Century, fortresses rather than mere dwellings, were built for defense, not comfort. The hall through which the drunken band was hallooing was broad, lofty, windy, strewn with rushes, now but faintly lighted by the dying embers in a great ill-ventilated fireplace. Rude, sail-like hangings along the walls rippled in the wind that found its way through.

Professor John Kirowan is a fictional character from Robert E. Howard’s contributions to H.P. Lovecraft’s story cycle „the Cthulhu Mythos”. Kirowan is often partnered with the character John Conrad, to the extent that these stories are often referred to under the group title Conrad & Kirowan. Professor Kirowan is a younger son of a titled Irish family and a scholar of the Mythos who travelled widely in search of forbidden knowledge. His ancestor, Sir Michael Kirowan was...

Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. In a meteoric career that spanned a mere twelve years, Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the sword and sorcery genre. From his fertile imagination sprang some of fiction’s most enduring heroes. Yet while Conan is indisputably Howard’s greatest creation, it was in his earlier sequence of tales featuring Kull, a fearless warrior with the b...

The Pool of the Black One is one of the original short stories starring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan becoming the captain of a pirate vessel and encountering a remote island with a mysterious pool that has powers of transmutation.

Robert E. Howard turned to writing comic and dialect Western tales only late in his career, but he found an immediate and continuously successful market for them, and they are in many respects his most accomplished and polished works. „The Pike Bearfield Stories” is a collection of stories in the western genre, featuring Pike Bearfield – the character who lead well-intentioned lives of perpetual confusion, mischance, and outright catastrophe. It includes: „While the Smoke R...

A great black shadow lay across the land, cleaving the red flame of the red sunset. To the man who toiled up the jungle trail it loomed like a symbol of death and horror, a menace brooding and terrible, like the shadow of a stealthy assassin flung upon some candle-lit wall.