Desert Adventures

Robert E. Howard created two resourceful men of action who roam the tumultuous frontiers of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Egypt, and Arabia at the turn of the 20th Century, while around them rage great global conflicts: the silent war between England and Russia for control of the strategic lands of India and Afghanistan and the guerrilla campaigns of T.E. Lawrence in Arabia during World War I. Although set in relatively modern times, these stories are marked by the same lavish color, precipitous action, and dauntless characters that distinguish Howard’s heroic fantasy. Only this time, you’re as likely to hear gunfire as the clash of steel when the fighting starts.

Francis X. Gordon

Gordon is called “El Borak” – the Swift – by the untamed tribesmen of Central Asia and the Middle East. The nickname describes his speed with sword and revolver, the latter skill perfected in an earlier career as a Texas gunman. A freelance adventurer who occasionally hires on with the British Secret Service to foil Russia’s imperialistic designs north of the Khyber Pass, Gordon sometimes rides into trouble alone, sometimes with a small band of dedicated friends. In the fearsome Land of Ghouls, he infiltrates and shatters a resurgent band of outlaws who have attempted to revive the brotherhood of the Assassins. In the corpse-choked Pass of Swords, he throws off his disguise as “Shirkuh,” a killer for hire, to foil the sinister Black Tigers. When WWI explodes, he follows the call of duty southward to fight alongside Lawrence of Arabia.

Kirby O’Donnell

Like Gordon, Kirby O’Donnell is a restless American who has found his true home on the far borders of High Tartary. Armed with the fighting-knife called the kindhjal and cloaked in the assumed identity of “Ali El Ghazi,” a Kurdish soldier of fortune, O’Donnell follows a legend of vast treasure to the forgotten city of Shahrazar. He finds the fortune, then consigns it to destruction so as to prevent it from igniting a conflagration across Central Asia. But another fabulous hoard awaits, the ruby-encrusted idol known as the Blood-stained God; it is O’Donnell’s for the taking, in the rugged hills beyond the Crag of Eagles – if he can survive multiple double-crosses to claim it!