In the blistering wastes of the East, American adventurer Steve Clarney and his fierce Afghan companion Yar Ali are pinned down by hostile horsemen with little water, little ammunition, and almost no hope. Their desperate stand is bound to a rumor of a lost black city and a blazing jewel—the Fire of Asshurbanipal—said to have been taken from an ancient throne and shadowed by curse, murder, and horror. Driven across Persia and Arabia by half-believed legends, they lose their camels, run low...

When Falred agrees to sit up with the body of the reclusive Adam Farrel, he expects a long, grim night—not a descent into terror. Alone in the darkening house with the corpse, he reads by fading light, but the silence, the encroaching night, and a sudden stirring of the sheet over the dead man's face awaken a primal fear of death. As the hours pass, Falred's unease becomes obsession. His imagination turns the body into something conscious and threatening, and even his attempts to dismiss h...

Cormac of Connacht enters a grim sacred grove and finds the Pictish world at war with itself and with Rome. There he meets Bran Mak Morn, a king trying to forge unity from divided clans, while priests, omens, and brutal rites reveal a people both savage and burdened by the memory of a greater past. Around them gather Britons, Gaels, and Northmen, each proud, armed, and unreliable, and the coming battle depends as much on loyalty as on steel. When the Northmen refuse to fight without a king...

John Conrad's midnight visit to Kirowan brings news of a death so dreadful it feels like the beginning of a curse: John Grimlan, a man feared for his cruelty and occult obsessions, has died in terrible agony. Grimlan's life was steeped in forbidden knowledge, from devil-worship and voodoo to darker mysteries that seemed to push beyond human sanity, and even his final moments were filled with terror at horrors no ordinary mind should face. As Conrad recounts their uneasy friendship and his ...

Kirby Garfield rides alone through the black pinewoods of Egypt to warn the reclusive Richard Brent that escaped killer Tope Braxton may be near, but the forest already feels wrong. A wounded man staggers from the shadows with tales of a white attacker who ripped him apart like an animal, and Kirby is soon struck himself by a silent assailant whose violence seems too savage for any ordinary man. Pressing on through the darkness, he catches eerie glows in the trees and reaches Brent's cabin...

In a rough seaside village ruled by swaggering sailor John Kulrek and his cringing accomplice Lie-lip Canool, fear and violence are the law. When Kulrek seduces and ruins a young woman from Moll Farrell's household, the girl is found dead on the shore, and the old woman's fierce curse rises against him with the force of the sea itself. Her vigil turns the village colder and stranger, as if nature has joined her in demanding vengeance. When Canool returns alone, evasive and haunted, the moo...

In the swamp-shadowed backcountry of Canaan, Kirby Buckner is driven by warning, fear, and a growing sense that the land itself is turning against him. A cryptic message sends him racing home through pine woods, black river country, and creek-bottom darkness, where a beautiful, mocking quadroon woman emerges from the shadows and lures him into a deadly trap. Ambushed by armed men, Kirby fights his way out, only to learn that Ridge Jackson has been murdered and that something larger is stir...

Solomon Kane will not be turned aside, even when a terrified youth warns him that the moor road to Torkertown is haunted by a deadly unseen horror. Choosing the lonely swamp at dusk, he rides into a night of whispering laughter, hunting cries, and rising dread, where courage becomes the only defense against the unknown. When Kane reaches the source of the terror, he finds a mutilated victim dying at his feet and a monstrous presence emerging from the mist: a shifting demon with blazing eye...

Seeking shelter in a lonely Black Forest tavern marked by a cleft skull, Solomon Kane and the dazzling Gaston l'Armon sense at once that something is wrong. The silent inn, its grim host, and a hidden chamber of bloodstains and chained bones draw them into a night of mounting dread, where betrayal lurks behind every shadow and murder seems only the beginning. Kane soon realizes the tavern has served as a place of killing, but before he can act, l'Armon reveals himself as the notorious band...

In a remote East African port, Bill Kirby meets a frightened Englishman whose terror is tied to a strange gong and a buried story from Somaliland's interior. Recalling the expedition that led him and John Conrad, a young American insect scholar, into unexplored country, Kirby describes a journey that begins in curiosity and becomes a descent into ancient dread as a haunting voice rises from the jungle and draws them onward. Their safari is swallowed by a hidden civilization: a lost valley ...

Steve Palmer, a shrewd boxing manager with an eye for hidden talent, discovers Slade Costigan, a raw, reckless heavyweight whose brute strength masks real promise. Under scientific training, Costigan begins to show startling speed and ring intelligence in the gym, but the moment he steps before a crowd, something seems to break inside him and he reverts to wild slugging. Palmer dreams of shaping him into a perfect champion, yet Costigan's early fights reveal a troubling pattern: jeers, pre...

"Pigeons from Hell" is a horror short story by American writer Robert E. Howard, written in late 1934 and published posthumously by Weird Tales in 1938. The title comes from an image in Howard's grandmother's ghost stories, that of a deserted plantation mansion haunted by pigeons. The Blassenvilles once owned the property but fell into poverty and soon, one by one, they all disappeared, Since then, the locals shun it. The pigeons sometimes flock about the decaying manor. Legend has it that...