Avon Fantasy Reader No. 10

Avon Fantasy Reader No. 10 This issue compiles adventure and fantasy fiction from noted contributors. The centerpiece is Robert E. Howard's "A Witch Shall Be Born," a Conan tale featuring identical twin princesses—one virtuous, one a witch bearing a blood-red crescent mark. Salome, the cursed witch princess abandoned in the desert as an infant, has survived through supernatural means and returned to usurp her twin's throne, having manipulated the mercenary Constantius. The story explores sorcery and deception within Howard's constructed pre-glacial world. Other fiction includes H. P. Lovecraft's "The Statement of Randolph Carter," a graveyard tale of macabre inquiry; Miles J. Breuer's "The Gostak and the Doshes," a semantics-focused science fiction story; Bassett Morgan's "Bimini," concerning an unnaturally youthful man and Arctic goddesses; Francis Flagg's "The Mentanicals," depicting future machine dominance; Amelia Reynolds Long's "Omega," an apocalyptic narrative; Malcolm Jameson's "Vengeance in Her Bones"; and Donald A. Wollheim's "Storm Warning."