Could any of you suggest a good, and at least relatively inexpensive collection of Clark Ashton Smith's or Robert E. Howard's horror related stories? And where to find it (or them)? I come across one every once in awhile in horror collections, but I would really like to have all of them at my disposal.

Well, as for Robert E. Howard, you could go for the Chaosium collection, Nameless Cults. The price is about fifteen bucks and Robert M. Price always does a solid job as editor of these Call of Cthulhu Fiction Collections. I happen to have a copy I can sell you, if you want to send me your info - I am registered with PayPal.
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Nameless Cults unfortunately focuses on Howard's mythos fiction, which means that there are two first-rate tales--"Worms of the Earth" and "The Shadow Kingdom"--two fairly good ones--"The Black Stone" and "The Gods of Bal Sagoth"--a lot of lesser work and several "posthumous collaborations". It is not bad, and I have always been fond of the tale written "with" Derleth, "The House in the Oaks", because of the additional information it gives about Justin Geoffrey. "The Valley of the Worm" always seemed at least as close to the mythos as most of Howard's legends of the malefic little people (which owe more to Machen than to Lovecraft), but no one else apparently feels that way, because it tends not to appear on very many mythos lists.

The rest of Howard's horror stories are scattered among a number of characters. Few of Howard's tales do not contain horrific episodes. Among the best of Howard's horror stories not set in fantasy settings are the regional tales "Pigeons from Hell", "The Dead Remember", "The Horror from the Mound" and "Black Canaan", the last of which remains powerful in spite of its racism. The first two tales are collected in an Ace Paperback, entitled PIGEONS FROM HELL. This collection also contains the interesting devil-variant tale, "The Garden of Fear", like "The Valley of the Worm", one of Howard's tales featuring the adventures of the crippled James Allison in past incarnations.

Jim

As to CAS, your best route is to pick up Arkham House's A RENDEZVOUS IN AVEROIGNE and go on from there. I am not entirely happy with the contents, but am largely so. From there you need to find the Necronomicon Press (preferably, though the Ballantines are also very good) collections of the Zothique and Hyperborea tales, or pray that someone reprints them. On the surface, Smith's Averoigne tales are closer to traditional horror stories than the rest of the author's tales, but they have some of the satirical edge of those set in Hyperborea and a strong sexual element reminiscent of those set in Zothique. If we ever live to see the day Donald Grant actually issues the book, Ron Hilger's edition of the Averoigne cycle should be quite a treat.