The Dancer at the Red Door

By Douglas Smith

Aurora Award Finalist story from a multi-award winning author.

"Doug Smith is, quite simply, the finest short-story writer Canada has ever produced in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and he's also the most prolific. His stories are a treasure trove of riches that will touch your heart while making you think."
—Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids and FlashForward

"A great storyteller with a gifted and individual voice."
— Charles de Lint

"One of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction."
— Library Journal

DESCRIPTION:
Alexander King has everything--wealth, power, a business empire over which he rules. But lately, the corporate game in which he excels has lost its thrill for him.

He needs a new game.

And then, on the crowded streets of Toronto, in the dead cold of winter, she appears before him. The Dancer.

Achingly beautiful, half-naked, and dancing to a song that only she and King seem to hear, she becomes King’s new obsession, an obsession that draws him into a journey through a secret world hidden within the city he thought he knew...and to a very special club.

REVIEWS:
"With its mix of oblique horror, urban fantasy, and monsters, [this story] recalls British horror novelist Clive Barker at his most disturbingly fanciful."
— Quill and Quire

"An excellent story ... urban fantasy at its best."
— Fantasy Book Critic

"...an intriguing meditation on escapism...evoking Gaiman's Neverwhere, the obligatory helping of Lovecraft, plus a touch of something like Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut"
—Strange Horizons

"Beautifully crafted ... The writing is lean and evocative; every element of the story works double-time as setting informs character, action creates mood, and nothing is superfluous. ... A wonderful story. Highly, highly recommended."
— Rainbow Dragon Recommends

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Doug is an award-winning author of speculative fiction, with over a million words of fiction sold and over a hundred short story sales to professional markets in thirty countries and two dozen languages.

He has published three short story collections: Chimerascope (ChiZine Publications, Canada, 2010), Impossibilia, (PS Publishing, UK, 2008), and just recently, La Danse des Esprits (Dreampress, France, 2011).

Doug has twice won Canada's Aurora Award for speculative fiction, and have been a finalist for the international John W. Campbell Award, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's Bookies Award, and the juried Sunburst Award.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas Smith
• Release date: Apr 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458111616

Douglas Smith

Douglas Smith is an award-winning historian and translator and the author of Rasputin and Former People, which was a bestseller in the U.K. His books have been translated into a dozen languages. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he has written for The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and has appeared in documentaries with the BBC, National Geographic, and Netflix. Before becoming a historian, he worked for the U.S. State Department in the Soviet Union and as a Russian affairs analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He lives with his family in Seattle.