Robert E. Howard

Relates the earliest adventures of Conan outside his homeland, as he travels into the cold north, where gods and monsters build terrible monuments in their own honor and drive men before them like plowed earth.

"Here are Howard's greatest horror tales, all in thier original, definitive versions. Some of Howard's best-known characters--Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them--roam the forbidding locales of the author's fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa"--Page 4 of cover.

Cimmerian Conan is captured as a child after his parents are murdered by raiding Vanir led by Thulsa Doom. After years of enslavement, Conan is freed to learn the "riddle of steel" and to kill the arch-villain Thulsa Doom.

This volume continues Del Reys line of classic Robert E. Howard stories. Instead of focusing on a single, iconic character, this collection features Howards most essential tales, set within various genres.

In this story, set early in his life, Conan has left his northern homeland to cut a bloody swath across the legendary Hyborian Age. A mercenary, a soldier, a thief, and a pirate, he faces conquering armies, malicious sorcerers, and monstrous creatures, against which he wields only the sword held in his powerful grasp. This novel leads directly into one of Robert E. Howard's most famous sword-and-sorcery adventures, "Red Nails," which is included as...