Excerpt: CONAN: CITY OF THE DEAD by John C. Hocking (Titan)

HockingJC-Conan1-CityOfTheDeadHCThe Cimmerian returns! In a couple of weeks, Titan Books are due to publish new Conan the Barbarian fiction! City of the Dead by John C. Hocking is an omnibus, collecting Conan and the Emerald Lotus (first published in 1995) and its highly-anticipated sequel, Conan and the Living Plague. The cover is by the always-excellent Jeffrey Alan Love.

To celebrate the release, the publisher has provided CR with an excerpt to share with our readers! First, check out the book’s synopsis:

The long-awaited follow-up to Conan and the Emerald Lotus brings John C. Hocking back to the sagas of the Cimmerian.

In Conan and the Emerald Lotus, the seeds of a deadly, addictive plant grant sorcerers immense power, but turn its users into inhuman killers.

In the exclusive, long-awaited sequel Conan and the Living Plague, a Shemite wizard seeks to create a serum to use as a lethal weapon. Instead he unleashes a hideous monster on the city of Dulcine. Hired to loot the city of its treasures, Conan and his fellows in the mercenary troop find themselves trapped in the depths of the city’s keep. To escape, they must defeat the creature, its plague-wracked undead followers, then face Lovecraftian horrors beyond mortal comprehension.

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Upcoming: EVERY MOUNTAIN MADE LOW by Alex White (Solaris)

WhiteA-EveryMountainMadeLowThe cover for Alex White‘s upcoming Every Mountain Made Low was unveiled a few minutes ago, and it’s a stunner — Jeffrey Alan Love’s style is so eye-catching. The novel, due to be published by Solaris in October 2016, sounds pretty interesting, too:

Loxley Fiddleback can see the dead, but the problem is… the dead can see her.

Ghosts have always been cruel to Loxley Fiddleback, especially the spirit of her only friend, alive only hours before. Loxley isn’t equipped to solve a murder: she lives near the bottom of a cutthroat, strip-mined metropolis known as “The Hole,” suffers from crippling anxiety and doesn’t cotton to strangers. Worse still, she’s haunted.

She inherited her ability to see spirits from the women of her family, but the dead see her, too. Ghosts are drawn to her like a bright fire, and their lightest touch leaves her with painful wounds.

Loxley swears to take blood for blood and find her friend’s killer. In doing so, she uncovers a conspiracy that rises all the way to the top of The Hole. As her enemies grow wise to her existence, she becomes the quarry, hunted by a brutal enforcer named Hiram McClintock. In sore need of confederates, Loxley must descend into the strangest depths of the city in order to have the revenge she seeks and, ultimately, her own salvation.

Looking forward to giving this a try.