This 860-page collection contains all of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian stories published during his lifetime, contextualized with biographical details of their author. The hardcover, a Multimedia Bundle Edition, includes the e-book and audiobook editions as downloadable bonus content. Excerpt from Introduction: "When the first Conan of Cimmeria story appeared in the pages of Weird Tales magazine in December 1932, nothing quite like it had ever before appeared in print.Author Robert E. Howard had been writing stories broadly similar to it for half a decade; but it was with Conan, and the Hyborian Age storyworld in which he was placed, that Howard finally fully doped out the sub-genre that would become known as "sword and sorcery," of which Howard is today considered the founding father. "Conan's origins date back to an experiment in 1926 titled "The Shadow Kingdom," featuring the character Kull, exile of Atlantis. The idea -- Howard's great innovation -- was, at its core, historical fiction set in a pre-historical period. That pre-historical period -- being, of course, lost in the mists of time -- could contain anything Howard might like to include: evil races of sentient snake-things, sorcerers, undead creatures, demons walking upon the earth, anything. "In other words, Howard was creating a secular mythology. "And as with any mythology, secular or no, there would be a hero, a Ulysses or a Theseus, an exceptional man of legend striding through that myth-world, sword in hand, righting wrongs and slaying supernatural monsters and, along the way, providing metaphorical insight onto his world and ours. "At the same time, he was finding success with another historical-fiction-fusion innovation: The grim, savage English Puritan Solomon Kane. Kane's world was the skull-strewn chaos of Europe and north Africa during the Thirty Years War, in the early 1600s. Little enough is known about specific events during that dark time that it was possible to take historical liberties with it as a storyworld, so that it could accommodate dark magic, walking skeletons, vampires, magic staffs, and, of course, N'Longa the witch-doctor. "Howard quickly realized he was onto something with Solomon Kane. The first Solomon Kane story, "Red Shadows," appeared in August 1928 in Weird Tales, and readers loved it. Here was a dark, brooding world of menace and witchcraft connected pseudo-genealogically to their own. It was easy for readers to "take the ride" -- to suspend their disbelief and envision Kane's adventures as a part of the real world. "But, perhaps the connection with the real world was too close. The countries of 1630s Europe are well known; the causes of the conflict fully understood. There was only so much Howard could do in Solomon Kane's world. Moreover, Solomon Kane is just a hard character to root for. Unlike Kull, he is, not to put too fine a point on it, really not a sane man. "So it makes perfect sense that after the shadowy, prehistoric world of Kull and the dark, necromantic world of Solomon Kane, Howard would combine these two precursors to develop a world that was far enough into the distant past to be free of actual historical constraints -- like Kull's -- yet close enough to the present to still exist as echoes and legends in the world's mythologies. "And so Howard created The Hyborian Age, circa 10,000 B.C. And to play the role of our avatar as we explore this shadowy, almost-historical world, he gave us Conan the Cimmerian - to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."

The intense psychological portrait of a hitman—the anti-Jason Bourne—as he stalks his prey from Boston to LA. He wants you to know him, maybe even admire him, but only for his excellence in his craft. Perhaps he was even born for it. "A natural killer," his mentor—a middleman named Vespucci—said he was. He proved it with his first professional hit: a Fifth Circuit Court judge in Boston, executed with a sheet of Saran Wrap in the stairwell of her own courthouse. He's proved his merit often, usually with a Glock semiautomatic, but he's improvised too, with his bare hands, the heel of a shoe, knives, even a sewing machine. He is the consummate assassin, at the top of his form, immune to the psychological strains of his chosen profession. He is what the Russians call a Silver Bear. He calls himself Columbus. It's the name Vespucci gave him, ten years ago, when he discovered a dark, new world of fences, clients, marks, jobs, jack. Not that his real name meant much to him anyway. He never knew his father or his mother, a prostitute who became dangerously involved back in the seventies with an earnest young congressman named Abe Mann, then a rising star in the Democratic Party. The magnetic Abe Mann has since become the Speaker of the House. He is currently running for the Democratic nomination in an exhausting presidential campaign, weaving his way across the country. Columbus is not far behind. But as he pieces together his past and prepares the seamless assassination of his mark, the criminal underworld he has always ruled begins unraveling violently around him.

An action-packed collection of Conan the Barbarian’s wild adventures. In this unparalleled collection from a literary mastermind, swordsman Conan the Barbarian faces powerful sorcerers, deadly creatures, and ruthless armies of thieves. With his character Conan the Barbarian, author Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery. In this volume are eighteen Conan stories, including a classic of dark fantasy, “The Phoenix and the Sword,” and the classic adventure “The Devil in Iron.” These timeless stories feature Conan the raw and dangerous youth, Conan the daring thief, Conan the swashbuckling pirate, and Conan the commander of armies, and bring to mind the pulp tales that dominated the mid-twentieth century. The Conan the Barbarian Stories includes “The Phoenix on the Sword,” “The Scarlet Citadel,” “The Tower of the Elephant,” “Black Colossus,” “The Slithering Shadow,” “The Pool of the Black One,” “Rogues in the House,” “Gods of the North,” “Shadows in the Moonlight,” “Queen of the Black Coast,” “The Devil in Iron,” “The People of the Black Circle,” “A Witch Shall be Born,” “Jewels of Gwahlur,” “Beyond the Black River,” “Shadows in Zamboula,” “Red Nails,” and “The Hyborian Age.” This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Conan the Cimmerian: the boy-thief who became a mercenary, who fought and loved his way across fabled lands to become King of Aquilonia. Neither supernatural fiends nore demonic sorcery could oppose the barbarian warrior as he wielded his mighty sword and dispatched his enemies to a bloody doom on the battlefields of the legendary Hyborian age. Collected together in one volume for the very first time, in chronological order, are Robert E. Howard's tales of the legendary hero, as fresh and atmospheric today as when they were first published in the pulp magazines of more than seventy years ago. Compiled by and with a foreward and afterword by award-winning writer and editor Stephen Jones.

Almuric is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert E. Howard. It was originally serialized in three parts in the magazine Weird Tales beginning in May 1939. The novel features a muscular hero known on earth as Esau Cairn, a complete misfit in modern America who "belongs in a simpler age". Exploited by a corrupt political boss whom he finally kills with his bare hands, Cairn must flee. A sympathetic scientist helps him get through space to a world known as Almuric where he finds frightening monsters and beautiful women.

In a meteoric career that spanned a mere twelve years, Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the genre that came to be called sword and sorcery. 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 brooding intellect of a philosopher, that Howard began to develop the distinctive themes, and the richly evocative blend of history and mythology, that would distinguish his later tales of the Hyborian Age. Much more than simply the prototype for Conan, Kull is a fascinating character in his own right: an exile from fabled Atlantis who wins the crown of Valusia, only to find it as much a burden as a prize. This groundbreaking collection, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist Justin Sweet, gathers together all Howard’s stories featuring Kull, from Kull’ s first published appearance, in “The Shadow Kingdom,” to “Kings of the Night,” Howard’ s last tale featuring the cerebral swordsman. The stories are presented just as Howard wrote them, with all subsequent editorial emendations removed. Also included are previously unpublished stories, drafts, and fragments, plus extensive notes on the texts, an introduction by Howard authority Steve Tompkins, and an essay by noted editor Patrice Louinet. Praise for Kull “Robert E. Howard had a gritty, vibrant style–broadsword writing that cut its way to the heart, with heroes who are truly larger than life.”—David Gemmell “Howard’s writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks.”—Stephen King “Howard was a true storyteller–one of the first, and certainly among the best, you’ll find in heroic fantasy. If you’ve never read him before, you’ re in for a real treat.”—Charles de Lint “For stark, living fear . . . what other writer is even in the running with Robert E. Howard?”—H. P. Lovecraft

Reprinted as they originally appeared in the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales from 1934 to 1936, this ferocious anthology gathers many of the barbarian's most famous adventures: "Red Nails," "The Hour of the Dragon," and three others.

In "Red Nails," Valeria, a fearless pirate, ventures into a dangerous jungle and encounters Conan. Together, they discover an ancient, abandoned city and soon find themselves caught in a conflict between two rival factions inhabiting the place. The tale is filled with action, mystery, and lurking dangers, set in a dark and enigmatic setting.

This collection contains all of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian stories published during his lifetime, contextualized with biographical details of their author. This pulp-size softcover is the same physical size and layout as the original 1930s pulp magazines in which the stories first ran. This softcover edition includes a searchable, sharable interactive PDF edition of the book as downloadable bonus content. Excerpt from Introduction: "When the first Conan of Cimmeria story appeared in the pages of Weird Tales magazine in December 1932, nothing quite like it had ever before appeared in print.Author Robert E. Howard had been writing stories broadly similar to it for half a decade; but it was with Conan, and the Hyborian Age storyworld in which he was placed, that Howard finally fully doped out the sub-genre that would become known as "sword and sorcery," of which Howard is today considered the founding father. "Conan's origins date back to an experiment in 1926 titled "The Shadow Kingdom," featuring the character Kull, exile of Atlantis. The idea - Howard's great innovation - was, at its core, historical fiction set in a pre-historical period. That pre-historical period - being, of course, lost in the mists of time - could contain anything Howard might like to include: evil races of sentient snake-things, sorcerers, undead creatures, demons walking upon the earth, anything. "In other words, Howard was creating a secular mythology. "And as with any mythology, secular or no, there would be a hero, a Ulysses or a Theseus, an exceptional man of legend striding through that myth-world, sword in hand, righting wrongs and slaying supernatural monsters and, along the way, providing metaphorical insight onto his world and ours. "At the same time, he was finding success with another historical-fiction-fusion innovation: The grim, savage English Puritan Solomon Kane. Kane's world was the skull-strewn chaos of Europe and north Africa during the Thirty Years War, in the early 1600s. Little enough is known about specific events during that dark time that it was possible to take historical liberties with it as a storyworld, so that it could accommodate dark magic, walking skeletons, vampires, magic staffs, and, of course, N'Longa the witch-doctor. "Howard quickly realized he was onto something with Solomon Kane. The first Solomon Kane story, "Red Shadows," appeared in August 1928 in Weird Tales, and readers loved it. Here was a dark, brooding world of menace and witchcraft connected pseudo-genealogically to their own. It was easy for readers to "take the ride" - to suspend their disbelief and envision Kane's adventures as a part of the real world. "But, perhaps the connection with the real world was too close. The countries of 1630s Europe are well known; the causes of the conflict fully understood. There was only so much Howard could do in Solomon Kane's world. Moreover, Solomon Kane is just a hard character to root for. Unlike Kull, he is, not to put too fine a point on it, really not a sane man. "So it makes perfect sense that after the shadowy, prehistoric world of Kull and the dark, necromantic world of Solomon Kane, Howard would combine these two precursors to develop a world that was far enough into the distant past to be free of actual historical constraints - like Kull's - yet close enough to the present to still exist as echoes and legends in the world's mythologies. "And so Howard created The Hyborian Age, circa 10,000 B.C. And to play the role of our avatar as we explore this shadowy, almost-historical world, he gave us Conan the Cimmerian - to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."

Before Robert Jordan conquered the bestseller lists with his phenomenally successful Wheel of Time series, he revived the legendary fantasy hero, Conan the Cimmerian. These widely acclaimed adventures introduced the world-famous barbarian to a new generation of readers. This volume contains three tales, CONAN THE INVISIBLE, CONAN THE DEFENDER and CONAN THE UNCONQUERED, all of which feature the storytelling magic and epic splendour that have made Robert Jordan one of the best-loved fantasy authors of all time.