The Phoenix on the Sword

Robert E. Howard

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.

The Pike Bearfield Stories

Robert E. Howard

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 Rolled, A Gent from the Pecos Shave That Hawg! , Gents on the Lynch, The riot at Bucksnort. They are reminiscent of traditional southwestern tall tales, told in dialect, featuring larger-than-life characters, swift action, broad satire, and wry humor. All stories are fast-paced with simple yet effective plots that have a few surprises thrown in for good measure.

The Pool of the Black One

Robert E. Howard

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.

The Saga of King Kull

Robert E. Howard

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 fictions most enduring heroes. Yet while Conan is indisputably Howards 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. Kull is an exile from fabled Atlantis who wins the crown of Valusia, only to find it as much a burden as a prize. This collection gathers together three stories plus one poem featuring Kull The Shadow Kingdom, The Mirrors Of Tuzun Thune, Kings of the Night and The King And The Oak.

The Scarlet Citadel

Robert E. Howard

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 tide.

The Shadow Kingdom

Robert E. Howard

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.

The Shadow of the Vulture

Robert E. Howard

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 emperors 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 halo of glory above Suleymans head.

The Sowers of the Thunder

Robert E. Howard

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 Generals friendly/adversarial relationship with Cahal Ruadh ODonnell, 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.

The Tower of the Elephant

Robert E. Howard

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 rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings.

The Treasures of Tartary

Robert E. Howard

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, Howards 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 Vultures of Whapeton

Robert E. Howard

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 hell just prevail in any kind of gunfight, no matter how outnumbered he is -- and then, of course, Corcoran goes on to do use that.

Three Tales of the Ring

Robert E. Howard

From the unsurpassed imagination of the creator of Conan, Robert E. Howard, here are three tales of boxing, suspense and high adventure. Three Tales of the Ring is an excellent sampler of his non-sword and sorcery output, with a very strong emphasis on the gothic and the macabre. The collection includes such Howards masterpieces as The Apparition in the Prize Ring, Alleys of Darkness, Cupid vs Pollux. The Apparition In the Prize Ring is a ghostly little boxing story, narrated by a boxing manager of a black heavyweight Ace Jessel also known by the title Sucker Fight. Alleys of Darkness is a story in the Sailor Dennis Dorgan series. Cupid VS. Pollux is similarly a bit humorous tale of a heavyweight boxer, whos fallen in love. The boxing tales of Robert E. Howard have been collected into several different collections, some containing only them, some all of the works Howard has written.

Wings in the Night

Robert E. Howard

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

Worms of the Earth

Robert E. Howard

The speaker wrapped his purple cloak closer about his powerful frame and settled back into his official chair, much as he might have settled back in his seat at the Circus Maximus to enjoy the clash of gladiatorial swords. Realization of power colored his every move. Whetted pride was necessary to Roman satisfaction, and Titus Sulla was justly proud; for he was military governor of Eboracum and answerable only to the emperor of Rome.

Xuthal of the Dusk

Robert E. Howard

The desert shimmered in the heat waves. Conan the Cimmerian stared out over the aching desolation and involuntarily drew the back of his powerful hand over his blackened lips. He stood like a bronze image in the sand, apparently impervious to the murderous sun, though his only garment was a silk loin-cloth, girdled by a wide gold-buckled belt from which hung a saber and a broad-bladed poniard. On his clean-cut limbs were evidences of scarcely healed wounds.