Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)
    The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)
    The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)
    Ebook53 pages48 minutes

    The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)

    By Robert E. Howard

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This early work by Robert E. Howard was originally published in 1933 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Slithering Shadow' is a story in the Conan series in which Conan encounters a demon in a remote desert. 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhite Press
    Release dateFeb 12, 2015
    ISBN9781473398221
    The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)
    Author

    Robert E. Howard

    Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) was an American author of pulp fiction, who made a name for himself by publishing numerous short stories in pulp magazines. Known as the “Father of Sword and Sorcery,” Howard helped create this subgenre of fiction. He is best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, who has inspired numerous film and television adaptations. Howard committed suicide at the age of thirty.  

    Read more from Robert E. Howard

    Related to The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Magnets: Carried through time, lovers seek their purpose.

      Feb 6, 2014

      Moon Colony B, 2213 Former Ponzi-schemer Mary Pillar digs through a trashcan. It smells like rotten eggs and milk. She is elderly and homeless, living in an alley between two eco-efficient skyscrapers. Dust particles dance around her. She has lost ev

      11 min read

    • Article

      “Properties of Thirst”

      Jul 5, 2022

      “Properties of Thirst”
      11 min read

    • Article

      Falling

      Jul 6, 2021

      Falling
      17 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Fredericksburg’s Wounded Warriors

      Jul 11, 2023

      Fredericksburg’s Wounded Warriors
      6 min read

    • Article

      Sleep Nights

      Oct 5, 2021

      Sleep Nights
      18 min read

    • Article

      Spellcheck

      Jan 1, 2019

      Whose history I do not know. I do know I’ve been e-upbraided for my fast and loose spelling of Woden, the god whose last worshipper must have slipped under the sod during the medieval period, somewhere in the 10th century—imagine those bog-soaked des

      5 min read

    • Article

      Omens of CHANGE

      Nov 7, 2024

      Omens of CHANGE
      6 min read

    • Article

      Winter Book Reviews

      Jun 7, 2019

      by Lawrence Osborne Published by Hogarth (an imprint of Vintage) ISBN 9781781090572 $27.99 Raymond Chandler’s legacy is precious and so it’s natural that invitations to write a Philip Marlowe novel should be rare. Burdened by the possibility of hair-

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Carnival Of Ash

      Mar 23, 2022

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 528 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Tom Beckerlegge Publisher Solaris Books Carnival: a colourful whirl, a time when all are masked and many things are done in disguise that would never be admitted openly. While the lives of

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Slave Who Braved All For Love

      May 4, 2020

      The Wikipedia entry says it all: ‘Florence Barbara Maria Szász, an orphan who became a slave, explored the Nile and died a lady.’ If Hollywood had been around in the 19th century, her life would have made a blockbuster. Very few people who visited th

      4 min read

    • Article

      Venice Peach

      Oct 2, 2023

      1. THE DRESSMAKER AND THE HIDDEN SOLDIER by Doug Gold (A&U) WWII thriller about Kiwi soldier and Greek dressmaker 2. SUMMER FAVOURITES by Vanya Insull (A&U) Recipes from @vj_cooks 3. TE REO KAPEKAPE: Māori Wit and Humour by Hona Black (Oratia) Having

      4 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 1, 2022

      Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. —Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” tr. by Clare C

      4 min read

    • Article

      New Titles

      Oct 10, 2018

      By George Keithley George Braziller, Inc. “The Donner Party is one of the three or four finest book-length American poems ever written.”—Poetry. “Out of the western migration of the 1840s…Keithley has made a lean, taut narrative poem that moves with

      9 min read

    • Article

      'Dunbar' Is A Moving, Brutal And Apt Update Of 'King Lear'

      Oct 5, 2017

      For centuries, Shakespeare's tragedy was too painful for audiences; it was performed with an altered happy ending. But Edward St. Aubyn has never flinched at inflicting pain on his readers.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Past Imperfect

      Sep 2, 2023

      Past Imperfect
      9 min read

    • Article

      7 BEST BOOKS of 2022

      Aug 10, 2022

      7 BEST BOOKS of 2022
      5 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Apr 29, 2024

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      7 BEST BOOKS of 2022

      Aug 10, 2022

      7 BEST BOOKS of 2022
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry

      Dec 18, 2020

      Rattling around the house in the County Sligo hills, swinging from bouts of paranoia to moments of strange, demented hilarity, a 900-page doorstopper was just what I needed to stay grounded. The post A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry appeared first on T

      2 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jan 23, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Literary Odd Couple

      Jan 4, 2022

      A Literary Odd Couple
      7 min read

    • Article

      Autumn Book Reviews

      Mar 8, 2022

      by Raynor Winn Published by Penguin Books ISBN 9781405937184 $22.99 Rendered homeless and penniless by an ill-advised investment with a friend, abetted by an unblinking court system, a couple in their fifties face profound economic and social upheava

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Books Briefing: The Best Books to Get Lost in This Summer

      Jul 9, 2021

      Memoirs and novels that satisfy the urge for high drama: Your weekly guide to the best in books

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Dan Sinykin

      Dec 11, 2023

      I’ve been squatting in the firebombed (was it?) city of Bellona with Samuel Delany in spare pockets of time for what feels like years. (It’s been weeks.) The post A Year in Reading: Dan Sinykin appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk) - Robert E. Howard

      The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)

      by

      Robert E. Howard

      Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Contents

      The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)

      Robert E. Howard

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Chapter IV

      Robert E. Howard

      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. Although he loved reading and learning, Howard developed a distinctly Texan, hardboiled outlook on the world. He became a passionate fan of boxing, taking it up at an amateur level, and from the age of nine began to write adventure tales of semi-historical bloodshed. In 1919, when Howard was thirteen, his family moved to the Central Texas hamlet of Cross Plains, where he would stay for the rest of his life.

      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. He published with the magazine regularly over the next few years. 1929 was a breakout year for Howard, in that the 23-year-old writer began to sell to other magazines, such as Ghost Stories and Argosy, both of whom had previously sent him hundreds of rejection slips. In 1930, he began a correspondence with weird fiction master H. P. Lovecraft which ran up to his death six years later, and is regarded as one of the great correspondence cycles in all of fantasy literature.

      It was partly due to Lovecraft’s encouragement that Howard created his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian. Conan – a barbarian-turned-King during the Hyborian Age, a mythical period of some 12,000 years ago – featured in seventeen Weird Tales stories between 1933 and 1936, and is now regarded as having spawned the ‘sword and sorcery’ genre, making Howard’s influence on fantasy literature comparable to that of J. R. R. Tolkien’s. The Conan stories have since been adapted many times, most famously in the series of films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

      Howard was enjoying an all-time high in sales by the beginning of 1936, but he was also deeply upset by the ill health of his mother, who had fallen into a coma. On the morning of June 11, 1936, he asked an attending nurse whether she would ever recover, and the nurse replied negatively. Howard walked to his car, parked outside the family home in Cross Plains, and shot himself. He died eight hours later, aged just thirty.

      Chapter I

      The desert shimmered in the heat waves. Conan the Cimmerian stared out over the aching desolation and involuntarily drew the back of his powerful hand over his blackened lips. He stood like a bronze image in the sand, apparently impervious to the murderous sun, though his only garment was a silk loin-cloth, girdled by a wide gold-buckled belt from which hung a saber and a broad-bladed poniard. On his clean-cut limbs were evidences of scarcely healed wounds.

      At his feet rested a girl, one white arm clasping his knee, against which her blond head drooped. Her white skin contrasted with his hard bronzed limbs; her short silken tunic, lownecked and sleeveless, girdled at the waist, emphasized rather than concealed her lithe figure.

      Conan shook his head, blinking. The sun’s glare half blinded him. He lifted a small canteen from his belt and shook it, scowling at the faint

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1