The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard » (Unabridged)

Robert E. Howard's (1906–1936) tales of heroic and supernatural fantasy won him a huge audience across the world and influenced a whole generation of writers, from Robert Jordan to Raymond E. Feist.

Robert E. Howard, renowned creator of Conan the barbarian, was also a master at conjuring tales of hair-raising horror. In a career spanning only twelve years, Howard wrote more than a hundred stories, with his most celebrated work appearing in Weird Tales, the preeminent pulp magazine of the era.

In this collection of Howard's greatest horror tales, some of the author's best-known characters—-Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them—-roam the forbidding locales of Howard's fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa.

Included in this collection is Howard's masterpiece "Pigeons from Hell," a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation—-and into the maw of its fatal secret. In "Black Canaan," even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers—-and none at...

Jonathan Pearce - Library Journal

Generously illustrated with artist Staples's mood-enhancing black-and-white drawings, and including many of the author's poems serving the same purpose, this first-ever collection of 60 stories and sketches of terror represent most of the styles employed by the young dean (1906-36) of American horror, who also created Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and Conan the Barbarian. Originally published in pulp magazines, these tales are often beautifully literate, the energy of Howard's writing nearly palpable. Vocabulary and language structure transport the reader in time and place, as exemplified in the medieval opener, "In the Forest of Villefere." The horrors include warped humans, monsters, werewolves, and fantastic beasts in period pieces, along with ordinary people in unusual modern circumstances, as in "The Touch of Death." The stories are not all horror. "The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux" is in effect a thrilling and inspirational, if now politically incorrect (through its use of dated language), sports fantasy. Recommended for all libraries.

In the Forest of Villefere 1

A Song of the Werewolf Folk 5

Wolfshead 6

Up, John Kane! 27

Remembrance 28

The Dream Snake 29

Sea Curse 35

The Moor Ghost 41

Moon Mockery 42

The Little People 43

Dead Man's Hate 49

Rattle of Bones 51

The Fear That Follows 57

The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux 58

Casonetto's Last Song 71

The Touch of Death 75

Out of the Deep 80

A Legend of Faring Town 88

Restless Waters 89

The Shadow of the Beast 95

The Dead Slaver's Tale 104

Dermod's Bane 105

The Hills of the Dead 110

Dig Me No Grave 131

The Song of a Mad Minstrel 142

The Children of the Night 143

Musings 158

The Black Stone 159

The Thing on the Roof 176

The Dweller in Dark Valley 184

The Horror from the Mound 185

A Dull Sound as of Knocking 200

People of the Dark 201

Delenda Est 217

The Cairn on the Headland 223

Worms of the Earth 240

The Symbol 268

The Valley of the Lost 269

The Hoofed Thing 289

The Noseless Horror 305

The Dwellers Under the Tomb 318

An Open Window 337

The House of Arabu 338

The Man on the Ground 360

Old Garfield's Heart 365

Kelly the Conjure-Man 376

Black Canaan 379

To a Woman 409

One Who Comes at Eventide 409

The Haunter of the Ring 410

Pigeons from Hell 424

The Dead Remember 449

The Fire of Asshurbanipal 456

Fragment 478

Which Will Scarcely Be Understood 479

Golnor the Ape 483

Spectres in the Dark 487

The House 498

Untitled Fragment 505

Appendix Notes on the Original Howard Texts 509