Robert E. Howard 11 min read

'Landlord, ho!' Two travelers halt at a forbidding forest tavern marked by a sign of a cleft skull, where a grudging bearded host takes their names: Solomon Kane, and Gaston l'Armon.

Robert E. Howard's 1929 story is a taut, atmospheric horror tale starring his grim Puritan avenger Solomon Kane. Vivid, dark, superbly told. Read it for a shivery Solomon Kane adventure of a sinister inn, old murder, and dread stirring in the Black Forest, from a master of pulp.

In its time

Published in 1929, during the 1920s, the pulp era proper.

Reading it

11 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Hugh Rankin