Red Nails

Red Nails is the last of the stories about Conan the Cimmerian written by American author Robert E. Howard. A novella, it was originally serialized in Weird Tales magazine from July to October 1936. It is set in the pseudo historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan encountering a lost city in which the degenerate inhabitants are proactively resigned to their own destruction. Due to its grim themes of decay and death, the story is considered a classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales.

Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) was an American author of a wide range of genres. He created the pulp fiction hero Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.