The Shadow Kingdom and other weird tales Robert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of ""a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror."" He is well known for having created the character Conan the Barbarian. Meet Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis, Bran Mak Morn, Black Vulmea, James Allison and others in Howards weird tales of fantasy and horror. In these classics Howard spins tales of unrelenting terror, the legacy of one of the world's great masters of the macabre.

This early work by Robert E. Howard was originally published in 1929 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Shadow Kingdom' is a story in the Kull series in which Kull is tricked by the Serpent Men and barely escapes with his life. Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906. During his youth, his family moved between a variety of Texan boomtowns, and Howard - a bookish and somewhat introverted child - was steeped in the violent myths and legends of the Old South. At fifteen Howard began to read the pulp magazines of the day, and to write more seriously. The December 1922 issue of his high school newspaper featured two of his stories, 'Golden Hope Christmas' and 'West is West'. In 1924 he sold his first piece - a short caveman tale titled 'Spear and Fang' - for $16 to the not-yet-famous Weird Tales magazine. Howard's most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, was a barbarian-turned-King during the Hyborian Age, a mythical period of some 12,000 years ago. Conan featured in seventeen Weird Tales stories between 1933 and 1936 which is why Howard is now regarded as having spawned the 'sword and sorcery' genre. The Conan stories have since been adapted many times, most famously in the series of films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Robert E. Howard was an accomplished writer in many genres but is most celebrated for his high fantasy set in a long-forgotten heroic age. This new collection brings together tales of his early hero Kull the Atlantean, King of Valusia, the Pictish king Bran Mak Morn from the Roman period and James Allison, the man who can remember all his past lives. This volume contains The Shadow Kingdom, The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune, Kings of the Night, Worms of the Earth, The Lost Race, The Valley of the Worm and The Garden of Fear.

Shadow Kingdoms is the first volume of the Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, presenting all of Howard's work from the classic magazine Weird Tales, meticulously restored to its original texts. This volume begins with "Spear and Fang," Howard's first professional fiction sale, and concludes with "Red Thunder," a gripping sword & sorcery tale. Series characters present in this volume include King Kull and Solomon Kane.

In a meteoric career that spanned a mere twelve years, Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the genre that came to be called sword and sorcery. From his fertile imagination sprang some of fiction’s most enduring heroes. Yet while Conan is indisputably Howard’s 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, that would distinguish his later tales of the Hyborian Age. Much more than simply the prototype for Conan, Kull is a fascinating character in his own right: an exile from fabled Atlantis who wins the crown of Valusia, only to find it as much a burden as a prize. This groundbreaking collection, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist Justin Sweet, gathers together all Howard’s stories featuring Kull, from Kull’ s first published appearance, in “The Shadow Kingdom,” to “Kings of the Night,” Howard’ s last tale featuring the cerebral swordsman. The stories are presented just as Howard wrote them, with all subsequent editorial emendations removed. Also included are previously unpublished stories, drafts, and fragments, plus extensive notes on the texts, an introduction by Howard authority Steve Tompkins, and an essay by noted editor Patrice Louinet. Praise for Kull “Robert E. Howard had a gritty, vibrant style–broadsword writing that cut its way to the heart, with heroes who are truly larger than life.”—David Gemmell “Howard’s writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks.”—Stephen King “Howard was a true storyteller–one of the first, and certainly among the best, you’ll find in heroic fantasy. If you’ve never read him before, you’ re in for a real treat.”—Charles de Lint “For stark, living fear . . . what other writer is even in the running with Robert E. Howard?”—H. P. Lovecraft

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first issues of Weird Tales Magazine, 100 Years of Weird is a masterful compendium of new and classic stories, flash fiction, essays, and poems from the giants of speculative fiction, including R. L. Stine, Laurell K. Hamilton, Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, Tennessee Williams, and Isaac Asimov. Marking a century of uniquely peculiar storytelling, each part of this anthology features a different genre from Cosmic Horror, Sword and Sorcery, Space Opera, to the Truly Weird—things too strange to publish elsewhere, and the magazine’s raison d’etre. Landmark stories such as “The Call of Cthulhu”, “Worms of the Earth”, and “Legal Rites” stand beside original stories and insightful essays from today’s masters of speculative fiction. This visually stunning hardcover edition is a collector’s dream, illustrated throughout with classic full color and black & white art from past issues of Weird Tales Magazine.