Kirby O’Donnell is a Howard hero less familiar to most readers. Howard only wrote three stories about O’Donnell’s exploits, of which only two actually saw print during his lifetime -- „The Treasures of Tartary” and „Swords of Shahrazar” -- neither in Weird Tales.

Steve Harrison is a police detective. His cases are not always easy but for sure very, very weird. Robert E. Howard delivers an impressive tour de force of weird fiction awesomeness with „Steve Harrison, Detective of the Occult! „. Three short masterful stories in the Steve Harrison series from one of the greatest fantasy writers of the 20th century, the uncontained, uncontainable, Mr. Robert E. Howard: „Fangs of Gold” „Names in the Black Book” „Graveyard Rats”. Robert Ervi...

Francis Xavier Gordon was a living legend in the Middle and Far East. The boars called him El Borac, „Swift,” the title earned by his awkward abilities with a gun, a knife and a sword. Now, the mighty El Borak must stretch its forces to prevent the Turkish uprising, protect the hermits from murders and stop the dangerous amir without allowing him to seize control over India.

Shadows in Zamboula is one of the original stories by Robert E. Howard about Conan the Cimmerian, first published in Weird Tales in November, 1935. Its original title was „The Man-Eaters of Zamboula”. The story takes place over the course of a night in the desert city of Zamboula, with political intrigue amidst streets filled with roaming cannibals. It features the character Baal-pteor, one of the few humans in the Conan stories to be a physical challenge for the main Cimme...

Some such thoughts flitted vaguely through my mind that night as I groped along the narrow trail that wound through the deep pinelands. Such thoughts are likely to keep company with any man who dares invade, in the night, that lonely stretch of densely timbered river-country which the black people call Egypt, for some obscurely racial reason.

The Iron Man has fought since time immemorial -- with but one thought in mind -- to get to his foe and crush him. The centuries, the costumes, the weapons are different. The object is the same. The gore and savagery of Howard’s tales of the ring is little removed from those exploits of Conan and Kull and Bran Mak Morn.It is common knowledge that Robert E. Howard was a boxing enthusiast, and his fellow author H. P. Lovecraft tied Howard’s interest in sports directly to his „...

Before Robert E. Howard wrote of „Conan the Cimmerian”, he wrote of the swashbuckler Solomon Kane. „The Adventures of Solomon Kane” takes you through Howard’s horrific and fantastic world of swords and sorcery, the world of ancient secrets and the monsters that live in the jungles of Africa where Kane vanquishes evil. Here are shudder-inducing tales of vengeful ghosts and bloodthirsty demons, of dark sorceries wielded by evil men and women, all opposed by a grim avenger arm...

Torches flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east held carnival by night. In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport. Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring. Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness ...

The Sowers of the Thunder is a short story by Robert E. Howard (published in Oriental Stories, Winter 1932) that takes place in Outremer (the Crusader states) in the time of General Baibars and deals with the General’s friendly/adversarial relationship with Cahal Ruadh O’Donnell, an Irish Crusader with a troubled past cut in the Howardian mold. Both the Siege of Jerusalem (1244) and the Battle of La Forbie feature in the plot.

So thay brought the envoys, pallid from months of imprisonment, before the canopied throne of Suleyman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey, and the mightiest monarch in an age of mighty monarchs. Under the great purple dome of the royal chamber gleamed the throne before which the world trembled– gold-paneled, pearl-inlaid. An emperor’s wealth in gems was sewn into the silken canopy from which depended a shimmering string of pearls ending a frieze of emeralds which hung like a...

The roar of battle had died away; the shout of victory mingled with the cries of the dying. Like gay-hued leaves after an autumn storm, the fallen littered the plain; the sinking sun shimmered on burnished helmets, gilt-worked mail, silver breastplates, broken swords and the heavy regal folds of silken standards, overthrown in pools of curdling crimson. In silent heaps lay war- horses and their steel-clad riders, flowing manes and blowing plumes stained alike in the red tid...

The tall Englishman, Pembroke, was scratching lines on the earth with his hunting knife, talking in a jerky tone that indicated suppressed excitement: „I tell you, Ormond, that peak to the west is the one we were to look for. Here, I’ve marked a map in the dirt. This mark here represents our camp, and this one is the peak. We’ve marched north far enough.

The king of vendhya was dying. Through the hot, stifling night the temple gongs boomed and the conchs roared. Their clamor was a faint echo in the gold- domed chamber where Bhunda Chand struggled on the velvet-cushioned dais. Beads of sweat glistened on his dark skin; his fingers twisted the gold-worked fabric beneath him. He was young; no spear had touched him, no poison lurked in his wine.

The stories are humorously written as if told by Breckinridge Elkins, a hillbilly with no schooling. He and his kin live in the Humboldts in Nevada. Elkins is six feet six inches tall, is as strong as a grizzly bear. He can be just as bad tempered if riled. And there is a lot to rile him, especially his relatives.

This early work by Robert E. Howard was originally published. ’Hawk of the Hills’ is a story in the El Borak series where El Borak leads a tribe to war in Afganistan. I recommend this book

The silence of the pine woods lay like a brooding cloak about the soul of Bristol McGrath. The black shadows seemed fixed, immovable as the weight of superstition that overhung this forgotten back-country. Vague ancestral dreads stirred at the back of McGrath’s mind; for he was born in the pine woods, and sixteen years of roaming about the world had not erased their shadows.

This is a good book of four Western stories. The title story, however, is the longest. „The Vultures of Whapeton” suffers from a protagonist who is just a bit too manly and effective to be believed. Everyone who meets Steve Corcoran seems to instantly know he’ll just prevail in any kind of gunfight, no matter how outnumbered he is -- and then, of course, Corcoran goes on to do use that.

An Irish-American warrior passes himself of as a Kurd and sets out to steal the treasure of Tartary. This is one of Robert E, Howard’s fast-paced short stories, featuring lots of fights and sliced entrails. Not one of his best works, in my opinion, as it somehow lacks substance. It seemed all hell and no notion.

The blare of the trumpets grew louder, like a deep golden tide surge, like the soft booming of the evening tides against the silver beaches of Valusia. The throng shouted, women flung roses from the roofs as the rhythmic chiming of silver hosts came clearer and the first of the mighty array swung into view in the broad, white street that curved round the golden-spired Tower of Splendor.

...Shipwrecked on a mysterious island, two sailors find traces of a lost civilization – and memories of their own impossible part in it! ...The „last words” of an operatic tenor bring the music of hell to the man who destroyed him....Turlogh O’Brien, mighty Gaelic warrior who serves no master but gold and blood, battles for a kingdom against the fearful ancient gods of Bal-Sagoth. All together for the first time in The Gods of Bal-Sagoth.

The fisherman loosened his knife in its scabbard. The gesture was instinctive, for what he feared was nothing a knife could slay, not even the saw-edged crescent blade of the Yuetshi that could disembowel a man with an upward stroke. Neither man nor beast threatened him in the solitude which brooded over the castellated isle of Xapur.

This collection contains all of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian stories published during his lifetime, contextualized with biographical details of their author. His Conan stories feature a young barbarian warrior who carves himself a kingdom and rules with a degree of wisdom and justice. Neither supernatural fiends nor demonic sorcery could oppose the warrior as he wielded his mighty sword and dispatched his enemies to a bloody doom on the battlefields of the legenda...

Once it was called Eski-Hissar, the Old Castle, for it was very ancient even when the first Seljuks swept out of the east, and not even the Arabs, who rebuilt that crumbling pile in the days of Abu Bekr, knew what hands reared those massive bastions among the frowning foothills of the Taurus. Now, since the old keep had become a bandit’s hold, men called it Bab-el-Shaitan, the Gate of the Devil, and with good reason.

One of Robert E. Howard’s lesser known fictional characters, Kirby O’Donnell is an American treasure hunter in early-twentieth century Afghanistan disguised as a Kurdish merchant, „Ali el Ghazi”. „Ali el Ghazi” is a master of edged weapons, fiercely intelligent, tigerishly quick, and a merciless killer when threatened. Kirby O’Donnell is similar to another of Howard’s characters, El Borak, in many ways. However, O’Donnell seeks hidden treasures in all of his stories („Sword...