Buying Options

Read for Free

OR

Print List Price:	$6.99
Kindle Price:	$2.99 Save $4.00 (57%)

Promotions apply when you purchase

Deliver to your Kindle Library

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Tales from the Canyons of the Damned: No. 39 by [Daniel Arthur Smith, Paul B. Kohler, Ernie Howard, Steve Oden, Jessica West]

Follow the Authors

See all

Daniel Arthur Smith

Paul B Kohler

Tales from the Canyons of the Damned: No. 39 Kindle Edition

by Daniel Arthur Smith (Author), Paul B. Kohler (Author), Ernie Howard (Author), Format: Kindle Edition

5 ratings

Book 39 of 42: Tales from the Canyons of the Damned

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$2.99

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$6.99

—

Kindle
$0.00 Read with Kindle Unlimited to also enjoy access to over 3 million more titles $2.99 to buy
Paperback
$6.99

8 New from $6.99

This thirty-ninth issue of Tales from the Canyons of the Damned consists of five sharp, suspenseful, thought provoking short stories—each from a different featured master of speculative fiction.

Voodoo Queen by Steve Oden
Talk Box by Ernie Howard
Absolute Dark by Paul B. Kohler
The End… Again by Jessica West
The Lost Tapes: Arrow Lake by Daniel Arthur Smith

Tales from the Canyons of the Damned (canyonsofthedamned.com) is a dark science fiction, horror, & slipstream magazine we've been working on since 2015. What is Dark Science Fiction and Horror? Think of it as a literary Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, or Outer Limits, it's Netflix's Black Mirror and Amazon's Electric Dreams in the short story format. And it's a bargain. Each monthly issue has three-to-five sharp, suspenseful, satirical tales from today's top speculative fiction writers.
These are Dark Sci Fi Slipstream Tales like you've never read before.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B097F7P5HY
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Holt Smith Limited (June 16, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 16, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1032 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 90 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,670,849 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,547 in Colonization Science Fiction eBooks
- #3,165 in Space Exploration Science Fiction eBooks
- #3,247 in Horror Anthologies (Books)

Customer Reviews:
5 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Daniel Arthur Smith
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Daniel Arthur Smith is a USA Today bestselling author. His titles include Spectral Shift, Hugh Howey Lives, The Cathari Treasure, The Somali Deception, and a few other novels and short stories. He also curates the phenomenal short fiction series Tales from the Canyons of the Damned and Frontiers of Speculative Fiction.
He was raised in Michigan and graduated from Western Michigan University where he studied philosophy, with focus on cognitive science, meta-physics, and comparative religion. He began his career as a bartender, barista, poetry house proprietor, teacher, and then became a technologist and futurist for the Fortune 100 across the Americas and Europe.
Daniel has traveled to over 300 cities in 22 countries, residing in Los Angeles, Kalamazoo, Prague, Crete, and now writes between Manhattan and Connecticut where he lives with his wife and young sons.
For more information, visit danielarthursmith.com
See more on the author's page
Paul B Kohler
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Paul B Kohler is the International Bestselling author of the highly acclaimed novel Linear Shift. His recent work includes Turn, Detour, and Reversion, from The Humanity's Edge Trilogy, along with several short stories. His short story, Rememorations, was included in The Immortality Chronicles - The Best Anthology Of The Year as voted in the 2016 Preditors and Editors Readers Poll. Rememorations was also nominated for Best American Science Fiction.
Sign up for Paul's newsletter to get a FREE BOOK! Then, you'll be one the first to know about his new releases or book specials: http://paulkohler.net/newsletter/
See more on the author's page
Ernie Howard
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Ernie Howard was born on January 29,1977 during a Minnesota blizzard. His two story telling parents almost didn't make it to the hospital in their beat up blue Cadillac.
Ernie is the author of The Pool, A World Without, Walter, and Float, On Holiday with an S.O.B. Two short tales that recently appeared in Tales from the Canyons of the Damned.
All of these books are available on Kindle.
Ernie lives with his wife and 3 boys in Henderson, NV, where he dreams up new stories and tries to live every day to the fullest.
Sign up for Ernie's newsletter at http://eepurl.com/bZlK7H
See more on the author's page

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

5 global ratings

5 star		68%
4 star		32%
3 star 0% (0%)		0%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Rebask

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 3, 2021

Something wicked this way comes...
I love the "Tales from the Canyons of the Damned". They're always entertaining. Always well written. Always well done. This one is certainly no exception to the rule.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Chris Fried @ The Indie Athenaeum

Five spine-tingling stories that fascinate you with their amazing and dark tales of intrigue!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 7, 2021

In this thirty-ninth edition of Canyons, we get a plethora of stories from different genres. From a military story between warring factions infused with the supernatural to a tragedy where a grieving spouse finds a new purpose, to a man haunted by his past on a colony world in outer space.

There’s also an apocalypse where dark forces are trying to save humanity and a man giving his account of what happened one mysterious night in a lake where someone disappeared. Read on to find out more about:

Steve Oden’s “The Voodoo Queen” – In a brutal war between children/adolescents against sentient, bio-mechanical toys, a voodoo doll enters the fray with her own hidden agenda. Allied with neither side, she unleashes her demonic forces upon the battlefield to take control of a strategic chokepoint. With that, will she succeed in her goal to influence the outcome of the war?

This story continues to chronicle a war with heavy weapons, high casualty numbers, mysterious soldiers, and crazy tactics, continuing to prove that war, especially this one, is absolute hell. Throw in some supernatural forces into the mayhem and it creates a horrific series of battles where the only outcome is the heartbreaking reality of war and the numerous deaths of the soldiers who fight in it.

The changing alliances between kingdoms of the human children and the Free Toys churn the fog of war further. The viciousness of the combatants against each other makes it hard to stomach the level of violence in this tale. But what adds to the fast-paced level of action is the fact that this is toys versus children fighting each other, lending it an extra level of sadness.

This is also a sequel to this author’s story “Blind in Battle” from “Tales from the Canyons of the Damned: No. 37”. It’s part of a trifecta of stories set in the same universe, the first of which appeared in the thirty-sixth edition of “Canyons.” It delightfully expands on the world created in that story and takes it in new and remarkable directions.

Ernie Howard’s “Talk Box” – Thomas is very sad. Having lost his wife Alex to cancer, he is grief-stricken and depressed. Alex was like a big sister to Charly and all of them were close-knit before her death. Thomas eventually finds out that his wife can have conversations with him through a Talk Box, which is used to echo back what is played on a guitar. This helps with his grief. His deceased wife can only to him once a week at a very specific time, though. Will this help Thomas and even Charly cope with their loss?

At first, we know that Thomas has an appointment to keep weekly and revolves his entire life around it. The sense of pervasive sorrow in the lives of Thomas and Charly is deeply felt with every sentence I read. Fractured friendships and dwelling in the anguish of grief all feel raw and powerful.

There’s also the intrigue as we see how it changes Thomas’ emotions. Through flashbacks, I observed how Alex’s life changed theirs for the better through her positive attitude. And my eyes widened in astonishment as the finale of this story played out in a shocking and completely unexpected manner.

Paul B. Kohler’s “Absolute Dark” – Scott and his teenage daughter are part of a colony on the alien planet Vobos-3 when a mysterious disturbance out on the surface of the planet puts the lives of the entire colony at risk! Going outside to investigate, Scott gets caught up in this problem. So, how come it is bringing up memories of his traumatic past with his wife, Hannah? And will he be able to succeed in coping to grips with that while also solving the present-day problem?

There are dual storylines here: Scott is dealing with this deadly threat to the colony in the first one. It then cleverly intertwines with the flashbacks to what led their family to Vebos-9 and what happened to Hannah. The excitement of the first storyline is connected to the second one in puzzling and ultimately absorbing ways, with one surprisingly informing the other. I experienced Thomas' loneliness of being in a distant colony while being saddened by the depression of this loss. All of this brought the story full circle in a satisfying and emotionally rewarding way.

Jessica West’s “The End…Again” – As Kirsten gives birth to a baby in a grocery store, she knows she’s not going to survive the experience. Lilith searches for Kirsten, seeking her out, but not for the reasons you might suspect. As the baby is born, we learn he is exceptional and talented, but what is his purpose? And what does all of this have to do with the apocalypse outside the building?

There is a thriller and an enigma wrapped into this one short story taut with tension. From the disturbing birth, the identity of the baby, its actions upon being born, and its purpose in life, there's a lot is going on here! Then there is Lilith, who is stalking the baby, trying to find it. But Lilith’s purpose in the story is also secretive too. As each morsel of the truth became more apparent, I kept wanting, no, DEMANDING to know more.

As my distress increased and it exploded into a vicious and shocking finale, everything was finally revealed by the end and WOW, I did not see that coming. Remarkably, there is also much love of a child to its parent and vice versa that drives this story. That is not what I would’ve expected from a story in this genre but it nourished this tale and made it more tender as a result, even with the horror surrounding it.

Daniel Arthur Smith’s “The Lost Tapes: Arrow Lake” – Agents Muldoon and Meyer are trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious circumstances. There’s been two disappearances at Arrow Lake: Hal Landon and his ten-year-old son Peter. As Mr. Westerhausen recounts what happened, he unfurls a story of what happened to Peter and then what happened to Hal. As Hal’s desire to know what happened to his son intensifies, he seeks out the creature that he suspects in his son’s disappearance in the lake. What happened to him out there and was it even real?

This is a compelling tale, surrounded by the mists of a lake with a history of strange occurrences and the local legend of a creature that might reside there. Fueled by vengeance, Hal begins a descent into madness and becomes increasingly more unhinged. The battle that rages in the middle of the lake is keenly felt by the horrifying and surreal finale. Reason and safety take a back seat as trauma and revenge take hold into an exhilarating battle for survival between man and beast.

There’s also a subtle connection “The Lost Tapes – The Rain Man”, from “Tales from the Canyons of the Damned: No. 37”. In that story, agents Muldoon and Meyer were in the area investigating another inexplicable occurrence.

This is a rare “Canyons” issue for me, as I have read many stories by every single author in this issue. They all continue to tell rousing stories of a high caliber that engross me with their gripping tales of darkness, depression, and unsettling storytelling. It’s been a while since the last issue of Canyons and I have missed it. This new issue is exhilarating, continuing to showcase authors with awesome short stories. The entire series continues to astound me and pushes the boundaries of my imagination. As always, I await the next new issue to see where it brings me next.