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    The Dancer at the Red Door
    The Dancer at the Red Door
    The Dancer at the Red Door
    Ebook45 pages

    The Dancer at the Red Door

    By Douglas Smith

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Aurora Award Finalist

     

    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.

     

    Urban fantasy (short story)

     

    "'The Dancer at the Red Door,' with its mix of oblique horror, urban fantasy, and monsters ... 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

     

    "...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

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDouglas Smith
    Release dateJun 1, 2011
    ISBN9781928048152
    The Dancer at the Red Door
    Author

    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.

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      Book preview

      The Dancer at the Red Door - Douglas Smith

      The Dancer at the Red Door

      by Douglas Smith

      Aurora Award Finalist

      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.

      ~~

      ‘The Dancer at the Red Door,’ with its mix of oblique horror, urban fantasy, and monsters ... 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

      ...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

      Just as the song of the city leads King throughout his journey, so too does it lead the reader throughout Douglas Smith’s beautifully crafted ‘The Dancer at the Red Door.’ 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. The song becomes a living, breathing creature which, more so than hearing, I could feel viscerally as I read Doug’s wonderful story. Highly, highly recommended.

      —Rainbow Dragon Recommends

      Table of Contents

      DESCRIPTION

      THE DANCER AT THE RED DOOR

      ABOUT THE STORY

      A REQUEST

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      ALSO BY DOUGLAS SMITH

      THE HOLLOW BOYS

      THE WOLF AT THE END OF THE WORLD

      CHIMERASCOPE

      COPYRIGHT

      THE DANCER AT THE RED DOOR

      The city has a song.

      Its rhythm, a million broken hearts...

      ALEXANDER KING FIRST

      met the Dancer on the day the street people began to glow.

      He drove to his office in downtown Toronto early that July morning in his newest toy, a vintage Jaguar XKE, dark red with black leather seats—a toy he’d always wanted, and one of which he’d already tired. He pondered this as he parked in his reserved spot beneath the building of blue glass and silvered steel that bore his name. Riding his private elevator to the penthouse executive floor, he felt a strange unease awakening with the day.

      He met first with his management team to finalize the acquisition of a competitor. They sat in his office, walls hung with original Tissot drawings he’d once loved. Before signing the takeover papers, he noted both the concessions he’d won and the absence of any pleasure in reaching

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