Spiral Path Books

What happens when the world loses the last of a thing? Four mighty warriors set out to slay the last dragon, opposed by only a fool. But even a fool knows: the last of a thing is something to cherish. "One of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction." —Library Journal "The man is Sturgeon good. Zelazny good. I don't give those up easy." —Spider Robinson, Hugo and Nebula Awards winner "A great storyteller with a gifted and individual voice." —Charles de Lint, World Fantasy Award winner "His stories are a treasure trove of riches that will touch your heart while making you think." —Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula Awards winner

Aurora Award Finalist. When the Shogun’s soldiers burn his village and kill his parents, young Asai is rescued by a strange red hawk and led to a fabled temple. Here, he trains under Ikada, the Warrior of the Red Bird and seeker of the Hidden Light. Asai will be the last Warrior, and unless he can succeed where all other Warriors have failed—to discover the Hidden Light—then his people will suffer a thousand years of misery. But when Sawako, a beautiful young woman, challenges him, Asai must choose between his heart, his people, and his destiny."I loved this tale. ... It has the feel of a myth or legend about a boy who finds that his destiny is closely entwined with the destiny of a people. But rather than repeat a tale we’ve all read before, the author has written something subtly new. … Honestly, I could have read it forever. The ending was that perfect combination of sadness and hope." —SF Crowsnest Review"A spellbinding piece of writing set in a Japan-that-never-was that is both well-plotted and elegantly paced" —Strange Horizons"A superbly told, involving, and brilliantly paced short story, complete with an ending made more tragic by its inevitability... Worth the price of the issue." —Tangent Online "A mini-epic about a young boy named Asai and the phoenix that saves him from death while his village is being raided... If you love Japanese and Samurai stories, this one will give you goose bumps." —Tangent Online"Powerful, moving and not quite predictable (A+)" —Fantasy Book Critic"A wonderfully recounted story, with an excellent pace and a perfect ending." —Bibliopolis

Hari is the greatest thief that Taryaryo has ever known. Well, at least he was until he tried to steal a certain jewel from the most powerful wizard in the land. The theft went, uh, less than perfectly. Instead of the jewel, Hari finds he has stolen a curse. Now Hari has to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. All the time. Kind of career limiting for a thief. But Hari has a plan to win the jewel and rid himself of the curse. A plan that is also going less than perfectly. The wizard that Hari hired has just been killed by the demon that the wizard summoned, and that demon is about to eat Hari. At least things can’t get any worse. Can they?

Aurora Award Finalist story from a multi-award winning author. The House promised Jack wealth, fame, and revenge...if it didn’t kill him first.~~~Dr. Lucius Rainer, head of research at GenTech, is dead. But to Jack, it seems that his old mentor still lives on through his house. Certainly, Rainer’s strange island retreat exudes the personality of its late owner: isolated and eccentric, brooding and uninviting. But when GenTech learns that the house holds a working model of Rainer’s final project, Jack discovers that the house shares one other trait with its former owner.Dangerous.The house will open only to Jack’s biometrics, and will only allow two very specific people to accompany him: Wendy, Jack’s now ex-wife, and Deak Sanderson, Wendy’s new lover and Jack’s former rival at GenTech. As the three of them explore the house and its secrets, Jack discovers that some doors—in this house and in life—should never be opened.“A couple months ago I was introduced to Douglas Smith by way of his collected short stories, Impossibilia. So I was looking forward to his story 'Doorways' and was not disappointed. ... This story has a cunningly satisfying conclusion. I find a good short story falls into two categories: There is the complete story, the novel miniaturised, which is a nearly perfect art form. These are hard to capture but constantly illustrated by such writers as Douglas Smith.” —SF Crowsnest Book Reviews“…is based on an interesting concept … The puzzles [in the story] and the final invention that they hint at are intriguing … Smith ties [the story's] denouement’s metaphorical significance in well with the technological concept at the center of the plot.” —The Fix

Twelve-year-old Andy Pembleton's younger brother disappeared two years ago. The loss tore Andy's world apart. His father left. His mother withdrew into guilt, all but ignoring Andy.But Andy is going to change all of that. He has a plan to find his brother—a deeply disturbing one." …about every parent’s worst nightmare. This was a gripping tale and goes to show that not only parents suffer when a child goes missing and how it can warp a child." —Bitten By Books

Mary and her teenage son, Jase, survive by their own wits in a post-plague Earth. On the run from a vicious gang, they are saved by Bishop, a man with mysterious powers who just may be the Dead Man, the legendary hero of the Fall of Earth. But Bishop’s dark past catches up with them all, forcing Bishop to choose between his love for Mary and Jase, or revenge against the men who killed his family."All that you want in a sf short story is here from powerful characters, to action, mysterious happenings, and a dark, violent, but excellent tale. … A bittersweet ending adds to the power of the story. (A++)" —Fantasy Book Critic"…again shows off Smith's flair for the cinematic. … In his preface to the story, Smith announces his plan to write a novel about the Dead Man…I do look forward to reading it." —Strange Horizons"…has echoes of Stephen King wandering about its post-apocalyptic narrative." —Quill and Quire"…a wonderful example of the places this author is unafraid to go." —SF Crowsnest Reviews"…would make a great movie…a unique, post-apocalyptic blend of The Road Warrior and X-Men. … It was very well done." —Tangent Online"I liked the style and subtleties of the storytelling that kept me firmly on the edge of my seat. … The characters were what really impressed me, though—by a few lines into meeting each one you had a clear and definable presence in your mind." —SF Crowsnest Reviews

A woman tries in vain to convince those around her that the world is ending. Is she right…or is she losing her mind?

Think of human emotion as a geography, with peaks of pleasure and valleys of pain. Imagine a drug that flips the valleys and makes them peaks, too. You react now to an event based not on the pleasure or pain that it brings, but solely on the intensity of the emotion created. Pain brings pleasure, grief gives joy, horror renders ecstasy. Now give this drug to a soldier. Tell them to kill. Not in the historically acceptable murder of war, but in a systematic corporate strategy—of xenocide. They will kill. And they will revel in it. Welcome to the world of Scream.Jason Trelayne is a Screamer, a soldier forced to take part in the enslavement or death of entire races. But Trelayne falls in love with Philomela, a Scream Angel, an alien who produces the addictive drug. Does he love her for her beauty, for the drug she gives him, from guilt for what he has done to her people? And does she love truly him as she swears? Or is he simply her only hope for freedom, for her and her entire race? Forced to choose between freedom and love, what will they do?"…a multi-layered tale about a circus that features a pair of ‘angels’ who have the ability to produce a drug that produces pleasure based on intensity of emotion. Factor in that the owner of the circus is in love with one of the angels as well as addicted to the drug she produces, and the story quickly becomes one that holds the reader’s attention until the very end." —SpecFicWorld"Smith describes a disturbingly plausible military application for the narcotic … The basic concept behind the drug strikes me as one of those rare ideas that seems at once so perfect and so natural that someone must have come up with it before; but if someone has, I haven't heard about it, and regardless Smith exploits the potential of the idea extraordinarily well here." —Strange Horizons"…remind[ed] me of the reasons I love the author’s writing: his characterisation, attention to detail and recurring themes of love, faith and redemption." —SF Crowsnest Reviews"A visceral work […] a true pearl of the fantastic literature. Breath-taking." —Café de Ontem"The story has so many layers that I'm still sorting them out. And like an onion, I'm not sure if I'll ever find the final layer." —Tangent Online"A dark and powerful story with a first line that sets the tone for what is to come: 'They stopped beating Trelayne when they saw that he enjoyed it.' (A++)" —Fantasy Book Critic"Scream Angel was especially horrifying and compelling, and I wound up re-reading it again after I had finished the book." —Fluidity of Time

A Heroka story. Lilith Hoyl is a Heroka of the bird totem—a shapeshifter who hates the humans who killed her mate and hunt her kind. But when she meets a young girl awaiting a critical operation, their mutual love for birds brings joy back into both their lives.“One expects magic with this set-up, and magic does, indeed, follow, but pain cannot be forever vanquished, for either the girl or the Hoyl. The story charms as well as pains. In other hands, it would be mawkish, but Smith avoids all the pitfalls and gives us something bittersweet instead.” —Fantasy Literature

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

Aurora Award WINNER.The Walker is a child of the two Realms of the Continuum, a prince of Order and of Chaos—and a rebel against both. When he falls in love with an ephemeral, a mortal woman who is the key to the balance between the Realms, he triggers a struggle for her life—and the fate of her universe. "A very different sort of tale. ... A cosmic story of gods which seems to be inspired by the works of Michael Moorcock, and I think he would not be ashamed of it." —SF Crowsnest Reviews"A tale of epic love when a mortal gets caught between a battle of the gods. Smith reminds us that we have the potential to change the world around us and that self-sacrifice can be a means of making the world around us better." —Speculating Canada"The descriptions here have cosmic sweep…" —Locus Online

A Heroka story. Aurora Award Finalist story from a multi-award winning author. Lilith Hoyl awakes to find herself a prisoner in a top-secret government laboratory. To win her freedom, all she needs to do...is prove that she's human. If you enjoy shape-shifter and conspiracy stories, you'll enjoy this tale.“It's a very interesting turn-around story, in which our expectations are upended at the last minute. ...a good read, and sadly, far too relevant to our own present world.” —The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf“...great fun to read” —Dreams and Speculations“...has a woman fed chemicals to prove whether she’s human or a shape-shifter ... well worth reading.” —SF Crowsnest Reviews

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

Charlie the Pearl—con man, gambler, and ever absent father—is about to catch the dream that he’s chased his entire life—the secret of good luck. But it’s a secret that could cost Charlie the only thing in the world that he loves more than a winning streak—his daughter.

As First Officer on the part passenger ship, part space freighter, The Fiscal Restraint, Jack Dexter (Dex to his friends) thinks he knows all there is to know about "Murphy’s Law": If anything can go wrong, it will. And on the perpetually under-staffed, under-funded Restraint, it generally does. But he never expected to actually meet Murphy. The real Murphy. Dex hires Orville Sod onto the Restraint just before the ship makes the jump to deep space. Unfortunately, by the time that Dex figures out that Orville is a real-life "Murphy"—one of those sad souls who attract more than their fair share of calamity—things have become, uh, complicated. A VIP is almost killed… Food systems have shut down… The navigation computer has been destroyed.Well, at least things can’t get any worse…Oh…wait…"Douglas Smith showcases his talent for creating strong characters who are believable and sympathetic—even when they inhabit an absurd world. That world is painted vividly with efficient brush strokes as Smith expertly weaves between Murphy's misadventures on board the Fiscal Restraint and Dex's retelling of the same to his captive audience at The House Limit. 'Murphy's Law' is a hilarious, yet poignant read." —Rainbow Dragon Recommends

Jan Mirocek used to be a hunter. A very special hunter. Once, he had hunted the things that haunt the forests of the night in every culture of the world. The kallikantzari of Greece. The loup-garou of France. The kitsune of Japan. Were-beasts. Shape-shifters.Until one night, Jan made a mistake, and the woman he loved died. Now he shuns the dark and his own past, hiding in a big city. For the were-beasts never come here. Or do they? People are dying in Toronto, and all signs point to a shifter.But can Jan conquer his own fears to track down the killer? And what kind of shape shifter would be at home in a modern city?"A creature-hunter tale that kept me guessing until the very last paragraphs. I was on edge throughout the whole story!" —Melissa Minners, Global Pop Culture reviews"A police officer skilled in hunting supernatural entities encounters a new breed of shape-shifter specifically adapted to the urban environment." — Innsmouth Free Press