Solomon Kane

With Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard created more than the greatest action hero of the twentieth century-he also launched a genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery. But Conan was not the first archetypal adventurer to spring from Howard's fertile imagination.He was...a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan.... A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things.... Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect-he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.Collected in this volume are all of the stories that make up the thrilling saga of the dour and deadly Puritan: "Skulls in the Stars," "The Right Hand of Doom," "Red Shadows," "Rattle of Bones," "The Castle of the Devil," "Death's Black Riders," "The Moon of Skulls," "The One Black Stain," "The Blue Flame of Vengeance," "The Hills of the Dead," "Hawk of Basti," "The Return of Sir Richard Grenville," "Wings in the Night," "The Footfalls Within," "The Children of Asshur," and "Solomon Kane's Homecoming."

Solomon Kane was heading to Torkertown and had two routes to choose from - a direct route across a moor, or a long tedious route through the swamps. Ignoring the warning of the villagers that he had just left behind, he decides that he will take the direct route across the moor. A young man of the village, seeing that Kane is heading towards the moor, rushes to beg him to please take the swamp route the next day instead of venturing through the moor at night. The boy tells him of the old miser, Ezra, who dwells on the moor but will be of no help, and his cousin Gideon who went crazy and died in the night. Kane, craving the adventure that lies ahead of him, decides to meet the madness of the moors head on. After a ghastly experience in the moor, Kane reveals to the village the truth of what is going on in the night.