Writer Fred Van Lente's incredible run on Conan reaches its epic conclusion! Taramis, the beloved queen of Khauran, was born with a twin sister, Salome--but by an ancient doom placed on their bloodline Salome's chest bore a scarlet half-moon birthmark: the mark of the witch! Left to die in the desert, Salome survived instead, and grew up to embrace her malevolent destiny . . . and now she's back, to take vengeance on all of Khauran! Featuring perhaps the most famous event in the Conan mythos, Conan's crucifixion, this spellbinding volume collects Conan the Avenger #20-25.
"A Witch Shall Be Born" by Robert E. Howard is a tale of dark sorcery and royal intrigue. Queen Taramis of Khauran is brutally usurped by her malevolent twin sister, Salome, a witch believed dead. Salome's reign of terror, marked by witchcraft and despotism, spurs Conan the Barbarian into action. As the captain of the queen's guard, Conan leads a rebellion to restore Taramis and free the kingdom from Salome's evil clutches.
Regarded by critics and fans alike as one of the most thrilling and tightly plotted of the Conan the Barbarian tales, The People of the Black Circle has the intrepid warrior absconding with a beautiful princess and desperately trying to foil a plot of world domination that has been hatched by a nefarious cabal of ruthless killers.
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.
Writer Fred Van Lente’s incredible run on Conan reaches its epic conclusion! This spellbinding volume features an evil witch bent on vengeance against her twin sister, as well as what is perhaps the most famous event in the Conan mythos—Conan’s crucifixion! Collects issues #20–#25 of Conan the Avenger. * Fred Van Lente wraps up his epic run! * Features one of the most famous scenes in the canon—the crucifixion of Conan! * Artist Jose Luis joins series regular Brian Ching!
In his hugely influential and tempestuous career, Robert E. Howard created the genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery—and brought to life one of fantasy’s boldest and most enduring figures: Conan the Cimmerian—reaver, slayer, barbarian, king. “Stories such as ‘The People of the Black Circle’ glow with the fierce and eldritch light of [Howard’s] frenzied intensity.”—Stephen King This lavishly illustrated volume gathers together three of Howard’s longest and most famous Conan stories–two of them printed for the first time directly from Howard’ s typescript–along with a collection of the author’s previously unpublished and rarely seen outlines, notes, and drafts. Longtime fans and new readers alike will agree that The Bloody Crown of Conan merits a place of honor on every fantasy lover’s bookshelf. THE PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE Amid the towering crags of Vendhya, in the shadowy citadel of the Black Circle, Yasmina of the golden throne seeks vengeance against the Black Seers. Her only ally is also her most formidable enemy–Conan, the outlaw chief. THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON Toppled from the throne of Aquilonia by the evil machinations of an undead wizard, Conan must find the fabled jewel known as the Heart of Ahriman to reclaim his crown . . . and save his life. A WITCH SHALL BE BORN A malevolent witch of evil beauty. An enslaved queen. A kingdom in the iron grip of ruthless mercenaries. And Conan, who plots deadly vengeance against the human wolf who left him in the desert to die.
Before Robert Jordan conquered the bestseller lists with his phenomenally successful Wheel of Time series, he revived the legendary fantasy hero, Conan the Cimmerian. These widely acclaimed adventures introduced the world-famous barbarian to a new generation of readers. This volume contains three tales, CONAN THE INVISIBLE, CONAN THE DEFENDER and CONAN THE UNCONQUERED, all of which feature the storytelling magic and epic splendour that have made Robert Jordan one of the best-loved fantasy authors of all time.
This 860-page collection contains all of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian stories published during his lifetime, contextualized with biographical details of their author. The hardcover, a Multimedia Bundle Edition, includes the e-book and audiobook editions as downloadable bonus content. Excerpt from Introduction: "When the first Conan of Cimmeria story appeared in the pages of Weird Tales magazine in December 1932, nothing quite like it had ever before appeared in print.Author Robert E. Howard had been writing stories broadly similar to it for half a decade; but it was with Conan, and the Hyborian Age storyworld in which he was placed, that Howard finally fully doped out the sub-genre that would become known as "sword and sorcery," of which Howard is today considered the founding father. "Conan's origins date back to an experiment in 1926 titled "The Shadow Kingdom," featuring the character Kull, exile of Atlantis. The idea -- Howard's great innovation -- was, at its core, historical fiction set in a pre-historical period. That pre-historical period -- being, of course, lost in the mists of time -- could contain anything Howard might like to include: evil races of sentient snake-things, sorcerers, undead creatures, demons walking upon the earth, anything. "In other words, Howard was creating a secular mythology. "And as with any mythology, secular or no, there would be a hero, a Ulysses or a Theseus, an exceptional man of legend striding through that myth-world, sword in hand, righting wrongs and slaying supernatural monsters and, along the way, providing metaphorical insight onto his world and ours. "At the same time, he was finding success with another historical-fiction-fusion innovation: The grim, savage English Puritan Solomon Kane. Kane's world was the skull-strewn chaos of Europe and north Africa during the Thirty Years War, in the early 1600s. Little enough is known about specific events during that dark time that it was possible to take historical liberties with it as a storyworld, so that it could accommodate dark magic, walking skeletons, vampires, magic staffs, and, of course, N'Longa the witch-doctor. "Howard quickly realized he was onto something with Solomon Kane. The first Solomon Kane story, "Red Shadows," appeared in August 1928 in Weird Tales, and readers loved it. Here was a dark, brooding world of menace and witchcraft connected pseudo-genealogically to their own. It was easy for readers to "take the ride" -- to suspend their disbelief and envision Kane's adventures as a part of the real world. "But, perhaps the connection with the real world was too close. The countries of 1630s Europe are well known; the causes of the conflict fully understood. There was only so much Howard could do in Solomon Kane's world. Moreover, Solomon Kane is just a hard character to root for. Unlike Kull, he is, not to put too fine a point on it, really not a sane man. "So it makes perfect sense that after the shadowy, prehistoric world of Kull and the dark, necromantic world of Solomon Kane, Howard would combine these two precursors to develop a world that was far enough into the distant past to be free of actual historical constraints -- like Kull's -- yet close enough to the present to still exist as echoes and legends in the world's mythologies. "And so Howard created The Hyborian Age, circa 10,000 B.C. And to play the role of our avatar as we explore this shadowy, almost-historical world, he gave us Conan the Cimmerian - to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."
Two queens, two religions, two visions for the future of the nation. Fleeing to London with a witch hunter on her trail, Alyce discovers her own dark magic and lands herself embroiled in the struggle. Alyce's mother has just been burnt at the stake for practicing witchcraft. With only a thin set of instructions and a witch's mommet for guidance, Alyce must face the world that she's been sealed off from -- a world of fear and superstition. With a witch hunter fast on her trail, she'll need the help of an innkeeper and a boy looking to discover the truth behind his own mother's past. But as her journey continues, another war rages: a hidden war of the supernatural, of the living and the dead. Good and evil are blurred, and nobody's motives can be trusted. And Alyce finds herself thrown unwillingly into the conflict. Struggling to understand her own powers, she is quickly drawn into a web of secret, lies, and dark magic that could change the fate of the world she is just coming to know.This dark, twisty, and thrillingly original debut will leave readers entranced in its suspenseful plot and rich prose.
