Showing results by author "Dean Smith" in All Categories

Urban fantasy offers a diverse playground for some extremely powerful stories. Professional writer and editor Kerrie L. Hughes pulled some fantastic tales out of 14 top writers for this fifth installment of Fiction River. Set in urban lands from modern Portland, to a future Detroit, to a wild Washington, D.C., and ending the tour in London, these top writers take the idea of "Hex" and stretch and twist it into stories with a magickal grip on the imagination.

"A sweeping, breathless romance" and "deliciously twisty" ~Jennifer deBie of Rosie's Book Review Team General Bakr, a half-human djinn warrior, has always felt like an outsider in the magical land of Qaf. Torn from his first love by war, he yearns to feel her touch—to hear her voice and kiss her lips. But the only reason he survived the searing scar across his torso was because a lilith demon made him her pet, and she doesn't like to share. Back at home in the magical kingdom of Shihala, Sheikha Sezan, a djinn princess, is just starting her war. Determined to be more than a marriage token...

Cowboy Stuntman chronicles the life and achievements of this colorful Texan and Olympic gold medal winner who spent a half century as a Hollywood stuntman and actor, appearing in 10 John Wayne movies and doubling for a long list of actors as diverse as Robert Culp, Michael Landon, Steve Martin, Strother Martin, Robert Redford, and Roy Rogers.

Sometimes, when a fella gets to help out with fightin' a war between two alien races, it's just not such a good idea to tell your wife. Sometimes the truth just isn't good enough. A really fun short story by USA Today best-selling writer Dean Wesley Smith. Best-selling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and hundreds published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith.

Fiction River is an original fiction anthology series. Modeled on successful anthology series of the past, from Orbit to Universe to Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, the goal of Fiction River is to provide a forum for "original ground-breaking fiction of all genres". Each Fiction River volume will have electronic and trade paperback issues published by WMG Publishing, and will feature some of the best new and established fiction writers in publishing.

USA Today best-selling writer Dean Wesley Smith weaves a tale of love and survival in a devastated future world. When Carey Noack returns to the ruined Portland, Oregon, hoping to meet other survivors after three years of living alone, she doesn't expect the man of her dreams. At first, Matt Ladel, the only person living in the old city, thinks he imagined the beautiful woman weaving through dead cars. Then he finds the reality behind the fantasy.

For a vampire, saying goodbye to your mortal lover can be the hardest thing you ever have to do.

When Stout watches himself appear and dissappear a bunch of times right in front of his own jukebox, he knows his time machine needs some repairs. And in doing so, he finally gets to meet the inventors of the jukebox. But first he must deal with himself, in more ways than one.

Sometimes a lost gold mine offers up more than just gold. And sometimes a secret should remain a secret. A generational science fiction story from USA Today best-selling writer Dean Wesley Smith. A version of this story by Dean Wesley Smith first appeared in The Secret Prophecies of Nostradamus edited by Cynthia Sternau and Martin H. Greenberg.

We all look up at the moon and wonder. And maybe dream. For centuries, the moon filled our imaginations. Eleven professional writers took those dreams and set original stories on moons scattered all over the galaxy. Yet, as the dreams of centuries, every story holds a human touch. From a mythical man fulfilling a childhood wish to a fantastic addition to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's best-selling Retrieval Artist series, this volume of Fiction River allows you to travel to 11 different moons without leaving the comfort of home.

Frank, unsparing, often violent, and disturbing, these poems speak in the voice of a young man trying to navigate the city he loves as he lives in the long shadow of its decline with a sense of grace and hope. With the city of Baltimore as his backdrop, accomplished poet, author, and editor Dean Bartoli Smith offers a wrenching examination of our troubled attachments to place and the deepest wounds of the American psyche.

Belle returns to her old hometown, looking for clues as to what happened to her great-great-grandmother 100 years in the past. Zane, on a secret mission into the past, never expects to meet the woman of his dreams. A complex time travel novel that explores alternate realities, a future no one wants to face, and sets the Thunder Mountain universe going into the future.

When men start getting run over by slow-moving train cars in a gold rush town in the mountains of Idaho, Marshal Duster Kendal must solve the murders. But there might not be a motive besides the fact that Duster Kendal lives. Duster knows exactly what to do about that. And he needs to do it fast before things get much, much worse.

Sometimes the elderly can make a real difference when given a chance. Captain Brian Saber must recruit a 91-year old discredited scientist to help save all of humanity from a deadly attack by aliens deep in space. Science fiction with a human touch.

Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you had made a different decision? A bar napkin with a strange saying and a dragon gives Richard Cone just that: a second chance. Bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith returns to his popular Jukebox series with the origin story of the new owner of the Garden Lounge.

As the owner of the Garden Lounge and the time-traveling jukebox, Stout faces a critical decision when the love of his life comes to visit him and the regulars of the Garden. Many lives hang in the balance, including his, and the future of the Garden Lounge. And only a trip through the jukebox might save everything.

In a small diner on the Oregon Coast, Kelli Rae meets a handsome man named Jesse Parks. Turns out, she had seen him in a picture taken in an old mining town in Idaho more than 100 years before. And even worse, he had been following her.

Bonnie and Duster Kendal, two of the world's great mathematicians, hire historical interior designer April Buckley and architect Ryan Knott to design and furnish a huge lodge to the year 1900 standards. Only problem: The lodge can't be built. It can't exist. Yet, somehow it does because they've built it before. And fell in love in the process.

Sometimes the special jukebox in the Garden Lounge does more than take a person back to a memory. Sometimes it brings a memory to the bar. And when that memory is of a murder, Stout and the rest have to risk their lives to do the right thing. A special jukebox story from best-selling writer Dean Wesley Smith.

From fairy tales fractured into unrecognizability to Russian mobsters hanging out with zombies, from New World slavery to modern Alaskan cruise ships, the stories in Fantasy Adrift sail across the genre. Two writers make their fiction debuts next to best sellers Steve Perry and Dean Wesley Smith to take listeners on a journey of the imagination - as only Fiction River can do.