Dumas' most popular novel, The Three Musketeers, has long been a favorite with children, and its heroes are well-known from many a film and TV adaptation. Set in France in the seventeenth century, it follows the fortunes of d'Artagnan, a poor Gascon gentleman, who arrives in Paris to join the King's Musketeers and is befriended by three of them, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, with whom he embarks on a career of adventure and romance. Dumas is a brilliant...

In this story, set early in his life, Conan has left his northern homeland to cut a bloody swath across the legendary Hyborian Age. A mercenary, a soldier, a thief, and a pirate, he faces conquering armies, malicious sorcerers, and monstrous creatures, against which he wields only the sword held in his powerful grasp. This novel leads directly into one of Robert E. Howard's most famous sword-and-sorcery adventures, "Red Nails," which is included as...