Book picks similar to
Heroes in the Wind: From Kull to Conan by Robert E. Howard
fantasy
horror
classics
short-stories
Collected Ghost Stories
M.R. James - 1931
R. James is widely regarded as the father of the modern ghost story, and his tales have influenced horror writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King. First published in the early 1900s, they have never been out of print, and are recognized as classics of the genre. This collection contains some of his most chilling tales, including A View from a Hill, Rats, A School Story, The Ash Tree, and The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance. Read by BAFTA and Emmy-award winning actor Derek Jacobi, and with haunting and evocative music, these tales cannot fail to send a shiver down your spine.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The War of the Worlds
Manly Wade Wellman - 1975
The world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, along with his friend Professor Challenger embark on one of their most dangerous adventures to date... to discover the nature and intent of their extra-terrestrial attackers.
One Who Walked Alone – Robert E. Howard: The Final Years
Novalyne Price Ellis - 1986
Howard killed himself on June 11, 1936. He was thirty years of age. Because of his talent and because of the sheer bulk of his writing - achieved in so short a period of time - Howard has attracted a contemporary following that is devoted to his bigger-than-life characters: Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, Breckinridge Elkins...For the first time, information is available that provides a close observance of the man himself during his final years.Novalyne Price and Robert E. Howard spent hours riding over the central Texas countryside, and Howard talked enthusiastically and at length about the characters he created, his dreams of the future, his interest in history, and his belief that he had lived other lives.Novalyne Price, the one girl whom he dated, kept journals, diaries, and wrote short story-like essays of the conversations she had with Robert E. Howard and other members of the Cross Plains community. When Howard died, she held on to the journals, thinking that someday she would write about him. One Who Walked Alone is the culmination of that dream.Here is an astonishing and remarkable link with the past! Novalyne Price Ellis has written of Robert E. Howard as she knew him. This is not a second hand account.
Conan and the Spider God
L. Sprague de Camp - 1980
Sprague de Camp was revered in the genre of fantasy for both his fiction and nonfiction. Booklist praised his novel The Honorable Barbarian, saying: “The action is brisk, and the worlds and characters are described with de Camp's deft, light touch . . . thoroughly agreeable entertainment,” while Kirkus Reviews said of The Pixilated Peeress “the unassuming style and verve of the telling keep the pages turning. Pure prose junk-food.” But more important, L. Sprague de Camp wrote Dark Valley Destiny, the definitive biography of Conan’s creator, Robert E. Howard, leaving little wonder as to why Conan and the Spider God is considered one of the finest novels in the canon of Conan.Son of a blacksmith, a former slave and thief, Conan the Cimmerian has risen to the rank of Captain of the Royal Guard. But as usual, trouble is his bedfellow.Forced to kill while defending himself, Conan must flee the vengeance of the High Priest of Erlik. Foraging through field and forest, meeting friend and foe, Conan cuts a bloody swath through assassins and bounty hunters all the way to the sinister temple of Zath, where he encounters the huge and hideous Spider God. Facing certain death, Conan becomes both the hunter . . . and the hunted. Conan and the Spider God is a thrilling adventure of the mighty barbarian, from one of the genre's most revered authors.
Three Ghost Stories
Charles Dickens - 1998
Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime. The popularity of his novels and short stories has meant that not one has ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels, the usual format for fiction at the time, and each new part of his stories was eagerly anticipated by the reading public. Among his best-known works are Sketches by Boz (1836), The Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), Barnaby Rudge (1841), A Christmas Carol (1843), Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861) and Our Mutual Friend (1865).
The Dark Tower: And Other Stories
C.S. Lewis - 1977
S. Lewis’s adult religious books, a repackaged edition of the revered author’s definitive collection of short fiction, which explores enduring spiritual and science fiction themes such as space, time, reality, fantasy, God, and the fate of humankind.From C.S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—comes a collection of his dazzling short fiction.This collection of futuristic fiction includes a breathtaking science fiction story written early in his career in which Cambridge intellectuals witness the breach of space-time through a chronoscope—a telescope that looks not just into another world, but into another time. As powerful, inventive, and profound as his theological and philosophical works, The Dark Tower reveals another side of Lewis’s creative mind and his longtime fascination with reality and spirituality. It is ideal reading for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis’s longtime friend and colleague.
Saints and Strangers
Angela Carter - 1985
Angela Carter takes real people and literary legends - most often women - who have been mythologized or marginalized and recasts them in a new light. In a style that is sensual, cerebral, almost hypnotic, "The Fall River Axe-Murders" portrays the last hours before Lizzie Borden's infamous act: the sweltering heat, the weight of flannel and corsets, the clanging of the factory bells, the food reheated and reserved despite the lack of adequate refrigeration, the house "full of locked doors that open only into other rooms with other locked doors." In "Our Lady of the Massacre" the no-nonsense voice of an eighteenth-century prostitute/runaway slave questions who is civilized - the Indians or the white men? "Black Venus" gives voice to Charles Baudelaire's Creole mistress, Jeanne Duval: "you could say, not so much that Jeanne did not understand the lapidary, troubled serenity of her lover's poetry but, that it was a perpetual affront to her. He recited it to her by the hour and she ached, raged and chafed under it because his eloquence denied her language." "The Kiss" takes the traditional story of Tamburlaine's wife and gives it a new and refreshing ending. Sometimes disquieting, sometimes funny, always thought-provoking, Angela Carter's stories offer a feminist revision of images that lie deep in the public psyche.
P.N. Elrod Lunch Time Reading Omnibus
P.N. Elrod - 2011
Elrod's picked 15 of her favorite short works for this multi-genre collection spanning 15 years of publication.Also included is a never before published VAMPIRE FILES story, featuring her urban fantasy vampire PI, Jack Fleming!Each story has been polished afresh for this anthology, with pages of new material added.More information -- and previews of the stories! -- may be found at her website vampwriter-dot-com.Titles:1. A Night at the (Horse) Opera (Vampire Files, Fleming)2. The Breath of Bast (Vampire Files), Ecsott)3. Bossman (Original mystery, no vamps)4. Slaughter (Vampire Files, Fleming & Gordy)5. The Devil's Mark (Original historical vampire)6. You'll Catch Your Death (Vampire Files)7. Izzy's Shoe-In (Historical mystery introducing Izzy DeLeon, fearless girl reporter)8. The Quick Way Down (Vampire Files, Fleming and Gordy)9. The Scottish Ploy (Original romance/mystery)10. Grave-Robbed (Vampire Files, Fleming)11. The Company You Keep (Vampire Files, Gabriel Kroun)12. Death in Dover (Jonathan Barrett before he got vamped, historical mystery)13. Drawing Dead (ALL NEW VAMPIRE FILES, Fleming)14. King of Shreds and Patches (Hamlet from a different point of view, mystery)15. Fugitive (Science fiction/space opera)16. BONUS STORY! The Wind Breathes Cold (Quincey Morris: Vampire)
Sword and Sorceress IX
Marion Zimmer BradleyMercedes Lackey - 1992
In all of fantasy's far-flung realms, women of power - whether trained in the ways of the warrior or in the deepest secrets of sorcery - rally against those who seek to conquer and enslave.Join today's most visionary fantasy writers - Mercedes Lackey, Diana Paxson, Josepha Sherman, and their comrades in words - as they lead you on quests for:shape-changers who prowl the night in search of unsuspecting prey;a sword whose cost could prove far greater than gold;a dragon whose magic may seem more of a curse than a blessing - and countless other adventures where one miscast spell or off-target arrow could see the forces of darkness invading all the magic's lands...Introduction (Sword And Sorceress IX) • (1992) • essay by Marion Zimmer BradleySlave to the Sword • (1992) • short story by Tanya BeatyShadows Do Not Bleed • (1992) • short story by Bruce D. ArthursBeastly! • (1992) • short story by Lynne Armstrong-JonesPiper • (1992) • short story by Susan Hanniford CrowleyStopthrust • (1992) • short story by Diana L. PaxsonElynne Dragonchild • (1992) • short story by Phil BrucatoFreeing Souls • (1992) • short story by Lisa DeasonBlademistress • (1992) • short story by Jessie D. EakerSorcerers' Gate • (1992) • short story by Patricia Duffy NovakThe Birthday Gift • (1992) • short story by Elisabeth WatersTangled Webs • (1992) • short story by Laura J. UnderwoodWinterwood • (1992) • short story by Stephanie D. ShaverRed Wings • (1992) • short story by Josepha ShermanAbove the Ground • (1992) • short story by Eric HainesOn a Night Like Any Other • (1992) • short story by Mark TompkinsA Woman's Weapon • (1992) • short story by Mercedes LackeyBehind the Waterfall • (1992) • short story by Mary FreyHoard • (1992) • short story by Steven PiziksQueen of the Dead • (1992) • short story by Dorothy J. HeydtThe Flower that Does Not Wither • (1992) • short story by Dave SmedsTo Have and to Hold • (1992) • short story by Linda GordonThe Catalyst • (1992) • short story by Lee Ann MartinsBreaking Walls • (1992) • short story by Leslie Ann MillerThe Enchanted Frog • (1992) • novelette by Cynthia L. WardThe Price of the Gods • (1992) • short story by Roxana PiersonTiger's Eye • (1992) • short fiction by Syne Mitchell
Drive
James S.A. Corey - 2012
Corey. Set two hundred years in the future, where man has colonized the outer asteroid belt, The Expanse follows the case of a missing girl that brings together a hardened detective and a rogue ship captain in a race across the solar system to expose the greatest conspiracy in human history. "Drive" highlights a key moment in The Expanse universe whose ramifications set the foundation for the show.The story is a prequel taking place approximately 150 years prior to the main series, concerning Solomon Epstein and his invention of the Epstein drive.
Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik
Philip K. Dick - 2007
Dick is now seen as a uniquely visionary figure, a writer who, in editor Jonathan Lethem’s words, “wielded a sardonic yet heartbroken acuity about the plight of being alive in the twentieth century, one that makes him a lonely hero to the readers who cherish him.”This Library of America volume brings together four of Dick’s most original novels. The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award, describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is divided into separate occupation zones. The dizzying The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) posits a future in which competing hallucinogens proffer different brands of virtual reality, and an interplanetary drug tycoon can transform himself into a godlike figure transcending even physical death.Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), about a bounty hunter in search of escaped androids in a postapocalyptic society where status is measured by the possession of live animals and religious life is focused on a television personality, was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Ubik (1969), with its future world of psychic espionage agents and cryonically frozen patients inhabiting an illusory “half-life,” pursues Dick’s theme of simulated realities and false perceptions to ever more disturbing conclusions, as time collapses on itself and characters stranded in past eras search desperately for the elusive, constantly shape-shifting panacea Ubik. As with most of Dick’s novels, no plot summary can suggest the mesmerizing and constantly surprising texture of these astonishing books.Posing the questions “What is human?” and “What is real?” in a multitude of fascinating ways, Dick produced works—fantastic and weird, yet developed with precise logic, marked by wild humor and soaring flights of religious speculation—that are startlingly prescient imaginative anticipations of 21st-century quandaries.
The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
John Joseph AdamsTanith Lee - 2009
This reprint anthology showcases the best Holmes short fiction from the last 25 years, featuring stories by such visionaries as Stephen King, Neil Gaimen, Laura King, and many others.
Duel
Richard Matheson - 1971
It was Thursday and unseasonably hot for April. He had his suitcoat off, his tie removed and shirt collar opened, his sleeve cuffs folded back. There was sunlight on his left arm and on part of his lap. He could feel the heat of it through his dark trousers as he drove along the two-lane highway. For the past twenty minutes, he had not seen another vehicle going in either direction.Then he saw the truck...
The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror
William Sloane - 1964
In To Walk the Night, Bark Jones and his college buddy Jerry Lister, a science whiz, head back to their alma mater to visit a cherished professor of astronomy. They discover his body, consumed by fire, in his laboratory, and an uncannily beautiful young widow in his house—but nothing compares to the revelation that Jerry and Bark encounter in the deserts of Arizona at the end of the book. In The Edge of Running Water, Julian Blair, a brilliant electrophysicist, has retired to a small town in remotest Maine after the death of his wife. His latest experiments threaten to shake up the town, not to mention the universe itself.
The Girl Who Married a Lion: And Other Tales from Africa
Alexander McCall Smith - 2004
He now shares them in this jewel of a book.