Among the great pulp writers whose work continues to enthrall new generations of readers—Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. P. Lovecraft, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler—few were as versatile as Robert E. Howard. Best known as the creator of Conan, Howard also wrote not only of other memorable fantasy characters, such as Puritan swordsman Solomon Kane and Pictish king Bran Mak Morn, but hundreds of stories of boxing, detection, westerns, horror, “weird menace,” desert adventure, lost race, historicals, “spicies”, even “true confessions.”

Robert E Howard is best known as the father of “sword and sorcery” fiction, an exciting blend of swashbuckling action and supernatural horror epitomized by his characters King Kull, barbarian usurper of the throne of fabled Valusia, and Conan, who wanders the Hyborian Age “to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.” In a career that lasted only twelve years, he wrote some 300 stories and 800 poems, covering an astonishing variety of subject matter—fantasy, boxing, westerns, horror, adventure, historical, detective, spicy, even confessions—running the gamut from dark fantasy to broad humor, from brooding horror to gentle love story.

Crimson Shadows, edited by Rusty Burke, contains a selection of Howard's work from most of these genres.