Skull-Face

Robert E. Howard

• Publisher: White Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473323025
• eBook ISBN: 9781473397804

This early work by Robert E. Howard was originally published in the 1929 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Skull-Face' is one of Howard's stories featuring the character Sailor Steve Costigan and his hashish addiction. Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906. During his youth, his family moved between a variety of Texan boomtowns, and Howard - a bookish and somewhat introverted child - was steeped in the violent myths and legends of the Old South. At fifteen Howard began to read the pulp magazines of the day, and to write more seriously. The December 1922 issue of his high school newspaper featured two of his stories, 'Golden Hope Christmas' and 'West is West'. In 1924 he sold his first piece - a short caveman tale titled 'Spear and Fang' - for $16 to the not-yet-famous Weird Tales magazine. Howard's most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, was a barbarian-turned-King during the Hyborian Age, a mythical period of some 12,000 years ago. Conan featured in seventeen Weird Tales stories between 1933 and 1936 which is why Howard is now regarded as having spawned the 'sword and sorcery' genre. The Conan stories have since been adapted many times, most famously in the series of films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Table of contents

• Skull-Face
• Robert E. Howard
• Chapter 1. The Face in the Mist
• Chapter 2. The Hashish Slave
• Chapter 3. The Master of Doom
• Chapter 4. The Spider and the Fly
• Chapter 5. The Man on the Couch
• Chapter 6. The Dream Girl
• Chapter 7. The Man of the Skull
• Chapter 8. Black Wisdom
• Chapter 9. Kathulos of Egypt
• Chapter 10. The Dark House
• Chapter 11. Four Thirty-Four
• Chapter 12. The Stroke of Five
• Chapter 13. The Blind Beggar Who Rode
• Chapter 14. The Black Empire
• Chapter 15. The Mark of the Tulwar
• Chapter 16. The Mummy Who Laughed
• Chapter 17. The Dead Man from the Sea
• Chapter 18. The Grip of the Scorpion
• Chapter 19. Dark Fury
• Chapter 20. Ancient Horror
• Chapter 21. The Breaking of the Chain