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    A Taste Sweet & Salty
    A Taste Sweet & Salty
    A Taste Sweet & Salty
    Ebook35 pages

    A Taste Sweet & Salty

    By Douglas Smith

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    The man known only as Stranger lived and died in a town with no name. Each day he lived. And each night he died…

     

    Fantasy, surreal (short story)

     

    "...absolutely masterful...a kind of much, much creepier Quantum Leap: the amnesiac protagonist awakes in a new body each morning only to die in it by nightfall." —Strange Horizons

     

    "Another superb story … unpredictable and with a great ending, this story is another highlight of the [Chimerascope] collection (A++)." —Fantasy Book Critic

    "...wonderful...has a taste that lingers..." —SF Crowsnest

     

    "A charming tale about a man cursed to die every day and be reborn as someone else." —SFRevu

     

    "A fascinating fabulist premise..." — Internet Review of SF

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDouglas Smith
    Release dateJun 1, 2011
    ISBN9780991800766
    A Taste Sweet & Salty
    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.

    Read more from Douglas Smith

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      Book preview

      A Taste Sweet & Salty - Douglas Smith

      A Taste Sweet and Salty

      by Douglas Smith

      The man known only as Stranger lived and died in a town with no name. Each day he lived. And each night he died…

      ~~

      ...absolutely masterful...a kind of much, much creepier Quantum Leap: the amnesiac protagonist awakes in a new body each morning only to die in it by nightfall.

      —Strange Horizons

      Another superb story … unpredictable and with a great ending, this story is another highlight of the [Chimerascope] collection (A++).

      —Fantasy Book Critic

      ...wonderful...has a taste that lingers...

      —SF Crowsnest

      A charming tale about a man cursed to die every day and be reborn as someone else.

      —SFRevu

      A fascinating fabulist premise...

      —Internet Review of SF

      Table of Contents

      DESCRIPTION

      A TASTE SWEET AND SALTY

      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

      A TASTE SWEET AND SALTY

      THE MAN KNOWN

      only as Stranger lived and died in a town with no name.

      Each day he lived.

      And each night he died.

      One morning, Stranger might wake on silk sheets in a fine villa in the town. Rising, he would walk out onto a broad stone patio and look down over cobbled streets twisting between the red-clay buildings below. Out on the Medicean, ship sails billowed like clouds on an inverted sky. Ships he owned. He was rich. He was powerful.

      The next morning, he might wake naked and shivering in a dark forest, his skin painted with dew etched by the tracks of insects that had explored him in the night. He had nothing. He was nothing.

      Yet another morning, he would find himself before the altar of the town’s only church.

      Or on a ship. Or in the governor’s palace.

      A ditch. A general’s tent. A brothel.

      Sometimes rich, sometimes poor. Sometimes male, sometimes female. Old, young. Strong, weak. Sometimes known to all, and other times as he ever was to himself—a stranger.

      But always, he awoke in the town that huddled under

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