In 525 B.C., the Persian king Cambyses sent fifty thousand soldiers across the conquered Egyptian desert to take an oasis city not far from where the Libyan border stands today. According to Greek history, a hurricane-force sandstorm struck near the end of their six-hundred-mile trek. The army - all fifty thousand men - vanished without a single trace. Fast forward to 1986. A British archaeological team, sent to the edge of the Great Sand Sea to exhume evidence of the incident, has also gone missing. It's up to Hellboy to find the missing Brits and to discover what became of The Lost Army. This illustrated novel is written by Christopher Golden, best-selling author of the book Of Saints and Shadows. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has done sixty-eight black-and-white illustrations for the story.

On the frozen shores of Sweden, lightning strikes from a clear sky. The skeleton of a huge man is revealed, its fingers clutched around the handle of an iron hammer. No one who comes to see this marvel from Norse mythology can lift it—no one but Hellboy, who lifts the hammer just in time for lightning to strike again, welding it to his hand and leading him towards a bizarre series of visions and encounters.

Fifty years ago, a blood-red, cloven-hoofed demon was conjured up by Axis powers at the end of World War II, but adopted by the United States government, which gave him the name Hellboy and raised him in secrecy. Today, Hellboy is a top field agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. He questions the unknown - then beats it into submission. His latest case: angels have attacked the Vatican, destroying an entire floor of the building's precious library. That's a new one, even for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. The BPRD dispatches Hellboy and his amphibious colleague, Abe Sapien, to investigate. When they arrive ojn the scene, they discover that thousands of documents from all eras of history have been destroyed - except for one, saved from the holy fire by an obsessive scholar. His prize? An ancient scroll allegedly written by Jesus the Nazarene - decades after the crucifixion. Hellboy's first thought is that the scroll was the focus of the seraphim's attack - but why would heavenly creatures undertake such violence and ruin? The answer to this puzzle will lead Hellboy down a terrifying trail to ancient gods, vengeful demons, and a hidden world made of the purest evil...

Hellboy, a bloodred, cloven-hoofed demon raised by the United States government, is a top field agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. He questions the unknown—then beats it into submission. A dragon is seen perching on the statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio de Janeiro . . . A werewolf stalks the streets of Baltimore . . . A griffin slaughters a herd of horses in Madrid . . . Weird sightings of cryptozoological and mythological creatures abound around the globe. Sometimes the creatures simply appear and then vanish again, content merely to put in an appearance. Other times they make themselves known to entire cities, and leave their mark. Damaged buildings. Scars on the landscape. The occasional death. Then suddenly, the death toll escalates. One by one Hellboy and his friends at the BPRD are dispatched to avert disaster. Hellboy encounters a dragon in Brazil. Abe Sapien tackles a giant alligator in Venice. Liz Sherman faces off against a phoenix in the Mediterranean. But in dawning horror they realize it's all a distraction—heralding nothing so much as an event of apocalyptic proportions . . .

Religious artifacts from every faith are disappearing without a trace. The identity of the perpetrator is a complete mystery until Hellboy and Liz Sherman—acting on an unlikely tip from a ghost—foil a museum heist attempted by crude, robotic constructs inhabited by human spirits. One of these freed human spirits offers to help Hellboy track down those who imprisoned him: a fanatical order of psychics obsessed with creating a new messiah, one that will bring about a new stage of evolution for mankind—whether mankind is willing or not. Now only Hellboy and his colleagues stand between a vulnerable humanity and an evil, vengeful god.

When his ex-girlfriend Anastasia Bransfield, an archaeologist working in the remote Himalayas, stumbles upon a site purported to be the legendary "Dragon King Pool," the ancient dwelling of an evil dragon to whom local villagers would sacrifice a child each year, Hellboy heads for the excavation when the site is plagued by unearthly creatures, sabotage, and the disappearance of the young daughter of a dig leader. Original.

Hellboy comes to the crossroads in Enigma, Georgia, a small town best by strange occurrences. Sent to keep an eye on Sarah Nail, a young girl hiding from the curse of her family, Hellboy becomes entangled in the blood debt of evil mystical preacher, Brother Jester. Stuck between human malice and the mysteries of the occult, Hellboy comes up against an intrigue of ghosts, demon trees, talking bullfrogs, and a race of lost mutant children.

Hellboy has his hands full. While the supernatural is on a rampage in London, a series of brutal "Torso Murders" turns up at various sites around the city. All of the corpses are headless, limbless, and drained of their blood. Called in to investigate the killings, B.P.R.D. agents Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman discover a wellspring of black magic under the London streets. They also find a sack of heads. Hellboy descends into the dark underworld of London, encountering demons who prophesy the coming of plague and the opening of an eye to the otherworld, bringing forth death and destruction upon the land.

Hellboy is called to Amalfi, Italy, by Franca, a young member of the Esposito family. She fears that a dark curse on her family is about to claim her cousin as its next victim. Hellboy makes his way to their large home, and he encounters a flaming demon - a fire wolf - which he successfully fights off. Hellboy and Franca make their way to Pompeii, where Franca remembers seeing an image of the fire wolf whilst on an archaeological dig. Hellboy unearths the shriveled corpse of a demon hunter who was buried during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius, and it tells him of the fire-demon that escaped the grip of the volcano leading to that devastating eruption. Attacked again by the fire wolf, Hellboy and Franca have to make their way back to Amalfi to confront Adamo Esposito, the family elder. But already the volcano is rumbling again, and an eruption even more devastating than that historical catastrophe looks very, very close!

In Cancun, Mexico, police investigate a slaughter at a wedding ceremony. In Dublin, Ireland, the clientele of a backstreet pub are found dead. In Kyoto, Japan, the bullet train pulls into the station with blood-spattered windows. It is the time of the Black Sun. Across the world, the wolves are calling to each other. Locked in bodies that had no idea they were there, they rise from the depths of the unconscious and turn towards America! For Hellboy, it's a race against time to prevent a devastating wave of primal savagery washing across the land. And so he is drawn to Boston's Beacon Hill and the Grant Mansion, believed to be the most haunted house in New England, where the truth may lie buried.