Fleeing the sorcerous destruction of Xuchotl, Conan and the voluptuous pirate Valeria plunge into danger as spies and assassins pursue them. They land on the shores of the Lake of Death, where Spirit Seekers battle with the God-Men. Even a sword powered by barbarian might is of little use against such beings.

There are tales of ancient Nithia, a city buried in the sand for countless generations. And it is whispered that hidden in these forbidden ruins is the "Grim Grey God", a statue carved from an impossibly huge pearl. It is the treasure of a lifetime, more for the power it bestows than the wealth. Many seek it for their own dark ends. Conan must defeat all others and destroy the statue before it falls into the hands of evil.

Dimma, the Mist Mage, knows nothing of Conan, but the vile necromancer's plans require his death. Thayla, beautiful Queen of the Pili, would rather take Conan to her bed, but her own plots mean he must die. Even the lovely Cheen will let nothing stop her from recovering the sacred talisman of her people, and Conan must use all his battle prowess to stay alive.

Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted '40 Ford coupe. Between deliveries to roadhouses, brothels, and private clients, he lives with his formidable grandmother, evades federal agents, and stokes the wrath of a rival runner.

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.