Author: jmstine

Over 150,000 Words of Robert E. Howard Classics!

Here are some of the earliest adventures of Conan straight from the pages of the legendary pulp, Weird Tales. Thrill to the deadly perils the giant Cimmerian faces from the "Shadows in Zamboula," "The Devil in Iron," "Jewels of Gwahlur," "Red Nails," and seven other classics of sword and sorcery.

This is Conan as Robert E. Howard meant him to be! The iron-muscled barbarian is no superhero in a fur girdle, nor is he a gentleman. Howard's Conan is brave, strong and cunning—but also greedy, rapacious, opportunistic and self-serving. No one today writes stories as gripping, full-blooded and savage as the 1930s Texas writer, Robert E. Howard.

Cover art: original 1930s magazine cover for Conan story "The Devil in Iron," by Brundage.

Five years ago Geir Simonson won control of the Jurnburg, the great citadel built atop a stone pinnacle in another land. Now the wheel of fortune has turned and fate is against him—betrayed from within, the Jurnburg has fallen to the enemy. Geir and his loyal followers flee for their lives.

Their dismay at the loss of the Jurnburg is made even more bitter when they discover that the caravan of women and children, which they sent to safety several weeks before, was attacked by the brutal Eishaus men and the survivors have been taken captive. Bent on rescue of the missing women and children, Geir and his cohorts set out on a grim trek through the wilderness.

Meanwhile, Geir's enigmatic and powerful relative Irda, member of an elder race, has received word of the disaster at her home on the American west coast. Irda, who has taught Geir's sister Jory the secrets of shape control, decides to return to the other land and offer Geir what help she can. Together with Jory, and her shape-changing messenger, they head for the stone bridge which marks the boundary between this world and the other.

When they reach the boundary, Jory steps through a time portal and finds herself in the past, at the building of the Jurnburg. She realizes that she must be there to learn something which will help her brother. What is that vital piece of information? Even Irda, who meets here there, does not know. And if Jory does discover anything of value, how can she return to her own time with the information?

As this drama unfolds, Geir's wife, Jasith, organizes the escape of the missing women and children and leads them toward safety—but the enemy is close and time is running out.

In this exciting sf/fantasy adventure, sixteen-year-old Geir, his sister Jory, and their mother Sophia take a pathway to a nameless elsewhere, which lies on the other side of a stone bridge. Beyond the bridge is a land filled with science so advanced as to seem like magic.

An enigmatic white-haired woman named Irda, who claims to be the youngsters' grandmother, leads them and their mother on a journey intended to right a wrong which took place nearly two decades earlier. Lovely blonde Sophia fled this land with her lover many years ago, after stealing a strange black ring from Ullnar, Lord of the Jurnburg. Knowledge of what that ring controls is a dangerous secret, whose revelation threatens to bring the entire world to ruin.

The Lord of the Jurnburg and the Ice Lord of the far north skirmish, lie, and plot, as war between them draws ever nearer. Geir, caught in the political turmoil, must choose who he is going to follow. Meanwhile, his sister has been separated from him by accident and finds herself miles away, embroiled in the machinations of Berict, Dwarf Lord of the Eastern Caves and the smiling, scheming, villain Luk.

Sorm and Garm, the centuries-old shape changers, rescue Jory from the Ice Lord's minions, but they have plans and goals of their own and secret ways of achieving their ends. When Geir and his companions travel to Eishal, the Ice Lord's eerie training camp, to find and rescue the only one who knows what became of the black ring, brother and sister find themselves on opposite sides in a battle that may be to the death.

The final answer to the riddle lies buried in the mind of a man trained only to kill—and he cannot remember what it was.

Fans of Dan Brown, Steve Berry and James Rollins will love this edge-of-the-seat adventure that encompasses cryptology, history and the danger-filled quest for a lost amulet of almost unbelievable power.

Harry Buck is a charming rogue, liar, raconteur and soldier of Queen Victoria. Obsessed with the secrets beneath Egypt's sands, Harry came to Egypt as a young man and now can pass for an Egyptian among Egyptians. He has long yearned to find the long-lost Golden Seal of Isis—an ancient relic that gave the priests of Isis and Osiris power over life and death. When a clue to its whereabouts is discovered, Harry Buck begins a sweeping search through blood and betrayal, through lost cities and modern sinks of iniquity, as mysterious forces make it clear they will stop at nothing to be the first to possess it!

True love, impossible odds, cold steel, and an ancient Prince of Egypt restored to life; these are only a few of the obstacles Harry Buck must face on his quest—a quest that will ultimately reach beyond mortal life!

Two of Garrett's Best Novelettes!

Code in the Head is a delightful science fiction puzzler such as only Randall Garrett can write, and not available from any other publisher.

And as an added bonus, read Garrett's The Penal Cluster which suggests that tomorrow's technocracy will produce criminals considered too abominable to live on this Earth. But what exactly does abominable mean? And to whom?

Poul Anderson, Murray Leinster, Robert Bloch, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Sheckley pool their talents in a classic round-robin novella that stretches humanity almost to the breaking point on the rack of Time and Space.

Humanity was falling before the onslaught of the Cloud People, soon the last remains would be wiped out. So they sent Ban to the Prophetess for an oracle. "What you must overcome is Time itself," she told him and sent him off accompanied only by the youngest of her handmaidens. But as he approached the realm of the Cloud People, Ban was horror stricken to see his weapons disintegrate into rust and find himself withering and dying of old age!

Here, from the July 1960 issue of the legendary pulp Fantastic, is a rare pyrotechnic display of sf writing skills and styles. More than a great story, it is a revelation into how the minds of the great writers tick. Poul Anderson, creating his bravura characters and situations; Isaac Asimov, grounding the conflict in a framework of theory-in-action; then Bob Sheckley ripping the fabric by going to the ends of the galaxy for complications; penultimately, Murray Leinster adeptly beginning to fuse the story's strands; and finally Bob Bloch taking the wildly disheveled story and tying it up in a brilliant job of plot resolution, down to the patly ironic last sentence.

Great Pulp Space Adventure Classic from Hugo and Nebula and Hugo Nominee Author!

From the ruins of Stonehenge to the starships of Vallon, he sought the secret of a trace of memory...

When the man named Legion signed on as a soldier of fortune, he did not expect to end up as the master of a private island, nor to cower in ancient druid pits, nor fight for his life in the great hall of Okk-Hamiloth on a planet galaxies away.

Keith Laumer, the master storyteller of interstellar adventure, sweeps you through time and space in a novel of retribution.

In this first of his adventures, Ki-Gor, a Rousseauian primitive who has been living alone in the jungles of Africa since he was a young boy, crosses the path of a beautiful young woman whose skin is also curiously pale like his own. Slowly they learn to communicate and fall in love as they are menaced by slavers, warrior tribes and the deadliest of jungle beasts.

The woman, Helene, who falls in love with the likable primitive, is an unusually strong figure in her own right for a pulp magazine heroine of the time. At the conclusion of the story, they set off with their elephant, Marmo, for who knows what future adventures.

The saga of a Nordic Conan!

Gunther the Viking, son of a swordmaker, is on a raid with his fellow Norsemen, when he becomes separated and enters enchanted woods that encircle the realm of Faery. There he encounters a succession of goddesses, fairies and magical women who fight him (and win), love him (and steal his heart) and bestow upon him advice and magical gifts, like the Wand of Learning and the Cauldron of Plenty—all of which he'll need when he returns to the world of mortals and encounters women as dangerous as any in the enchanted realms.

There is Aine, who steals his purse and lures him to a deadly encounter, and Guida, the pirate and princess, who would as soon spill blood as drink ale. And before his adventures are over, Gunther will brave Nitheim, region of icy darkness and cold, wash up on the shore of corpses, battle the dread serpent Nidhogg, fight polar Yeti, and be tortured by Hela, the Ice Queen of Nifheim. Throughout, only his swordmaking and swordfighting skills hold death at bay—until at last he meets his destiny.

Cover art: Jade.

Her father told her to beware of traveling salesmen, but he didn't say a word about traveling vampires...

In this delightful new fantasy novel that is sure to remind readers of Xanth and Discworld, Joe Vadalma applies his usual satirical skills to deftly skewer recent novels and movies about the undead.

If ever a girl yearned to escape the dreary world of farming and small town life, it was Sally—but her stepfather watches over her doings with an eagle eye. Slipping the leash for a night out at the local country and western bar, Sally spies a tall, pale stranger drinking alone. Her interest is piqued even further when she notices his huge, sexy motorcycle.

Soon the pair are parked somewhere, necking passionately. In fact, that's the last thing Sally remembers when she wakes up in her room the next morning—being nuzzled on the neck! Well, it's true love on both their parts, in the twilight, under the full moon, at breaking dawn, and during an eclipse, and neither can keep their hands or lips off each other. Then Sally discovers he's a vampire—but what does she care? Karl offers a chance to fly away from the bleak life she's always known—even if it means flying on leathern wings.

Sadly for Sally, the course of true love never runs true. If the two are ever to embrace in a happily-ever-after clinch for the fade-out, they will have to survive a vampire clan sworn to slay Karl, the ghost of Sally's great-grandmother, a murderer who has already struck twice, the mysterious Boris Magyar, and a man waiting in a graveyard holding a gun loaded with a silver bullet. If all this happens in this dizzying comic pastiche, what must lie ahead for our lovelorn heroine and her fashionably-pale beau in the sequel? ...And, of course, there will be a sequel!

A hilarious fantasy romp!