Under a sentence of death for his part in the winning the war for Aquilonia, Conan escapes from the jealous king intent on killing him and plots his revenge. Reissue.

Featuring Conan the Barbarian, this is a rip-roaring adventure of science fantasy. During the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age, Conan leads the army of Khoraja against an evil sorcerer named Natohk, "the Veiled One." It may not be believable, but it will delight fans of this genre of writing.

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.

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.