The Ship of Ishtar

John Kenton a wealthy archaeologist and disillusioned World War 1 veteran, ( the war to end all wars) receives a stone block, with a minute ship inside from Babylon (Iraq for the non-history buffs). This being a fantasy, he soon lands on a strange galley with slaves right out of an Arabian Nights fa......more

Abraham Merritt's position as editor of The American Weekly paid handsomely, giving him both the wealth and the leisure to pursue his hobbies: traveling the world, collecting rare volumes of the occult, cultivating orchids and herbs (with alleged magical properties), and writing fantasy and adventur......more

Abraham Merritt was every bit as much a master of lush prose as his contemporaries Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (and, in this book at least, that isn't the only valid comparison to Howard; John Kenton has definite Conan-like qualities, and the level of sometimes gruesome violence is not for the sq......more

One of the books that turned me on to heroic fantasy fiction back in the early Seventies. I've been a fan of Merritt's for a long time. He's little known outside a narrow field these days, but he knew how to drive a plot. Our protagonist is "sucked" into a sculpure of a boat, finding himself part of......more

Thanks to DMR for publishing this fantasy masterpiece as it reaches 100 years old. I’m not going to dive into the plot or the fantastic story. I want to concentrate on the influence. Abraham Merritt is one of the most influential, yet under appreciated authors of the first half of the 20th century. O......more