Conan (Lancer/Ace) Books in Order

The Lancer and Ace Conan paperbacks are one of the main reasons Conan became a mass-market fantasy hero instead of a remembered pulp character.

Beginning in the 1960s, this line gathered the Conan stories into a broad paperback sequence and tried to turn scattered magazine tales, fragments, and later additions into something like a full life story. The books were arranged by Conan's internal chronology rather than by original publication date, and they mixed Howard's finished stories with revisions, completions, and brand-new pastiches by later hands.

That approach is both the strength and the complication of the series. On one hand, it made Conan easy to follow. You could move from young adventurer to king in a readable, shelf-friendly order. On the other hand, these are not clean Howard-only texts. L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter edited heavily, filled gaps, and expanded the myth in ways many later readers would debate.

Still, the cultural impact is hard to overstate. For a lot of readers, this was Conan. The paperback covers helped too, especially the famous Frank Frazetta paintings, which gave the whole line a bold, instantly recognizable look.

So if you read this series, you are getting two things at once. You are getting a doorway into Howard's world, and you are getting a major chapter in the history of fantasy publishing. This page helps sort which volumes lean hardest on Howard, which are mostly later expansion, and how the line was put together.

If you want the Conan boom in paperback form, this is the place.