Please add any books that you might think a Howard fan would enjoy!

To kick things off I would suggest Legend by David Gemmell, or any other books by him! It is definitely a late 20th century book, but has some of the raw power and Gemmell was clearly influenced by REH.

I would also suggest that some of you can blow your own trumpets on this list! Mark Finn, you can give us some details of Blood and Thunder. Charles Gramlich, give us the details of your Talera books (not for my benefit, I've already reviewed the first one on my podcast).

Karl Edward Wagner gets my vote, but his books can be hard to come by. I like Kane as much as Conan or Kull, better than Bran, Solomon Kane or Cormach.

Edgar Rice Burroughs also. I haven't read a Barsoom or Tarzan story in ages.

Kane combines the best aspects of Conan and Michael Moorcock's Elric. You can definitely see the Howard influence in KEW's writing.

I have most of KEW's Kane books, I really must dig them out and read them!

I don't think I've ever read all of Michael Moorcock's Elric books in order. I've read more than a few, but never as a collected set. Considering how often he & Moonglum took off into other stories & universes, it's tough to do anyway. Is there any omnibus out there that packs them all together well? I have read all the The Chronicles of Corum & the Runestaff books.

My stepfather & I never got along well, but we had to take a couple of long trips when I was about 13. To shut me up, he bought me a few books at the local newsstand each time; The Jewel in the Skull, The Valley of Creation (a bad release with a couple of pages reversed), Chinese Puzzle & one of the early Mac Bolan, The Executioner books by Don Pendleton.

While I soured on The Executioner fairly quickly, I read the rest with a lot of interest. I have over 100 of the Destroyer series. If I never remember him for anything else, I'll remember him for picking out excellent reads, even though he didn't himself. I guess it was the cover art.

I read quite a few of the Moorcock books, back in the 80s.
The Hawkmoon series, then Corum and finally Elric. I really enjoyed them at the time, but I have found the later Elric books a little trickier to get into.

I also read the Oswald Bastable trilogy a few years ago, very interesting if you have any leanings towards steampunk!

Another pretty good sword and sorcery series is the ORON series by David C. Smith. There are four books in that series. The first two are really good. although the best sword and sorcery work by Smith was "The Sorcerer's Shadow." I also liked the "Death Dealer" books by James Silke, another four book series. These all had covers by Frazetta and featured a character based on Frazetta's Death Dealer painting.

For Moorcock, my favorite works by him are the Count Brass and Dorian Hawkmoon books.

And David, thanks for asking about my Talera books, and thanks so much for your review of "Swords of Talera" on your podcast. I much appreciated that. The first of the trilogy, "Swords," was most strongly influenced by ERB's Barsoom series and by Howard's "Almuric." I think the next two books, "Wings over Talera" and "Witch of Talera," became as much sword and sorcery as they were sword and planet. I like a lot of action in what I read, so the Talera series too has a lot of action. I also like the "exotic" quality of fantasy civilizations, though, so I tried to work quite a bit of that into the books. I hope folks like them.

The books are available online, of course, at Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon. If anyone should ever want signed copies, I have some available.

Charles de Lint is best known for urban fantasy, but he wrote a lot of excellent swords-and-sorcery stories early in his career, which are collected in A Handful of Coppers. One of his series protagonists is a female, the bounty huntress Aynber.

Especially if you like the distaff side of the genre, the Jirel stories by Howard's contemporary, C. L. Moore, collected in Jirel of Joiry, are worth a read. And don't overlook the Sword and Sorceress and Chicks in Chainmail anthologies. I've read the first volumes of each of these, and would recommend them.

The Science Fiction Book Club collected the essential Elric stories in two volumes. They also put out two more volumes later collected the later Elric stories Moorock wrote in the 90's and beyond.

Ditto on Moorcock (Elric and Hawkmoon especially). ERB's Tarzan and John Carter, CL Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, H P Lovecraft, Leigh Brackett, Roger Zelazny's Amber series, Fred Saberhagen's "Empire of the East".

Michael wrote: "Ditto on Moorcock (Elric and Hawkmoon especially). ERB's Tarzan and John Carter, CL Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, H P Lovecraft, Leigh Brackett, Roger Zelazny's Amber series, Fred Saberhagen's "Empire..."

I read most of Empire of the East about 18 years ago, unfortunately the book was in a guest house I stayed in and I had to leave before finishing it! I have always meant to get hold of it and finish it off!

David wrote: "Michael wrote: "Ditto on Moorcock (Elric and Hawkmoon especially). ERB's Tarzan and John Carter, CL Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, H P Lovecraft, Leigh Brackett, Roger Zelazny's Amber series, Fred Sabe..."

I highly recommend it. Fred Saberhagen's books are so well written. He is also a real gentleman. I met him two years in a row at a comic convention back in the late 80's. The second year he appeared with Roger Zelazny. I was in heaven speaking to them.