Literature Dramatized

If you think it’s hard being a hobgoblin or a human, try living a goblin’s life for a while. In fact, try imagining what it’s like to be the runtiest goblin in the caves, the lone worshiper of a god who’s been forgotten for a good reason, and the target everyone points to at the first hint of trouble. Try picturing yourself as Jig Dragonslayer, and see how you like it....

The nuclear exchange that ripped apart the world destroyed a way of life thousands of years in the making. Now, generations after the nuclear blight, Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists try to reclaim the hostile land, led by an undimmed vision of a better future. Hard on the heels of their escape from a powerful baroness, the wayfarers arrive at the shore of the might Mississippi. As if whisked back in time, they find themselves passengers on a riverboat plying the waters and offering every gambling pleasure.

Joe Sunday has been a Los Angeles low-life for years, but his life gets a whole lot lower when he is killed by the rival of his crime boss-only to return as a zombie. His only hope is to find and steal a talisman that he learns can grant immortality. But, unfortunately for Joe, every other undead thug and crime boss in Los Angeles is looking for the same thing.

There are two kinds of traps in the Old West. One is the kind that Preacher and his buddy, Charlie, use to catch a mountain-load of fur pelts. The other is the kind that Charlie steps into — a trap set by a low-life gambler and his seductive partner in crime to swindle Charlie out of his fur money. Preacher hates to see a good friend get robbed. So he sets off after the grifters — on a riverboat bound for New Orleans.

The damsel is in distress, or so it seems to Conrad Browning. On his way across the wide, tall Utah territory to California, the Loner meets a beautiful Mormon girl on the run from a forced wedding - and the gun-toting faithful trying to hunt her down. But there are two sides to every story - and the ones you don't hear are the ones that can get you killed. The runaway bride has a little history of her own. Soon, the Loner touches off a storm of unholy gunfire, drawing blood from an outlaw and a death sentence from a patriarch.

Conrad Browning had money, a manservant and a mission: to find his missing children and meet them for the first time. He's come as far as Denver, dodged a bullet from a beautiful assassin, and landed in a big buy-in poker tournament against a ruthless heavy-betting cattle baron with a plan of his own - to take this city slicker into the wilderness, and hunt him like an animal. But Rance McKinney doesn't know who he is facing. The son of legendary gunman Frank Morgan, Conrad goes by the moniker of the Loner.

In one of the most shocking chapters in the Jensen family saga, America's fearless frontier clan is about to take on an enemy as cold and relentless as evil itself - a mad, sadistic surgeon skilled with knives and his gang. They're gunning for the Jensen Sugarloaf ranch to ravage Jensen women, and spill an ocean of Jensen blood....

The Scottish Highlands, 1885. Two men, brandishing knives, attack a young woman outside a pub. Duff MacCallister steps in and saves her — killing one of the assailants. Big mistake. The attacker was the sheriff’s son, and now MacCallister is marked for death. His only hope: America. Here, in the sprawling land of dreams, Duff hopes to start a new life with his American cousins. Unfortunately, the sheriff’s deputies are tracking him down — with nine of the deadliest cutthroats money can buy.

St. Louis is a concrete jungle of fetid heat, acid rains, and cutthroats. With JB Dix gravely wounded, Ryan and his group become captive guests of a local barony. Freedom lies in the success of a deal: Recapture a runaway teen, daughter of the ailing baron. But the dangerous power behind the throne rests with a self-proclaimed holy man. His gruesome manipulation of life and death are about to put the group in a race for their own salvation. Every day is a devil's bargain in Deathlands.

Frances Hodgson Burnett introduces us to Mary Lennox, a spoiled and headstrong young girl sent to live with her uncle Archibald Craven at Misselthwaite Manor after her parents die from a cholera outbreak in India. At first, Mary is as sour and rude as ever. She dislikes her new home, the people living in it, and, most of all, the bleak moor on which it sits.

Emerging from a gateway into a redoubt filled with pre-Dark technology, Ryan and his band hope to unlock some of the secrets of post nuclear America. But the fortified redoubt is under the control of a half-mad former sec man hell-bent on vengeance, who orders Ryan and the others to jump-start his private war against two local barons. Under the harsh and pitiless glare of the rad-blasted desert sun, the companions fight to see another day, whatever it brings....

Fear and human depravity permeate the frigid air in a once-dynamic Alaskan city. Ryan Cawdor and his group of survivalists go on red alert the moment they set foot on the forbidding tundra, but regardless, they find themselves rounded up by cannibal coldhearts. The companions quickly discover there's a fate much worse than becoming food. Dangerous new experiments are taking place in a long-abandoned military base and, in the bitter heart of the frozen North, new horrors reach out to poison their hope for a better tomorrow.

When Doc is taken captive by a band of marauders in what was once Nebraska, Ryan and the companions rally to get him back. But they aren't just fighting the local muties. They're also up against the area's terrifying terrain, which shifts and morphs at a moment's notice. With their options dwindling in this mazelike region that doesn't obey the laws of physics, the team joins forces with a beautiful and deadly woman who evens the odds on the battlefield. But while this warrior seems to be on their side, she has a secret agenda that could spell the end for them all....

Built upon a predark military installation in former California, a ville called Progress could be the utopia Ryan Cawdor and his companions have been seeking. A place where humanity and technology thrive, it's the nucleus of a new hope for Deathlands. The successful replacement of Ryan's missing eye with a cybernetic prosthetic nearly convinces the group that their days of surviving hell are behind them. Then they discover that the high tech in Progress isn't designed to enhance human life, but to destroy it.

Deep in the Outlands, in Cerberus redoubt, Kane, a renegade Magistrate from the united baronies, experiences a shocking mind probe. It imprints him with a knowledge that propels him to the other side of the world, with the archivist Brigid and brother-at-arms Grant. In the heart of Tibet, Kane's small group of Outlanders wages a perilous quest pursuing a legend, only to discover they are not alone in their search for the Chintamani Stone. The ancient relic has the power to conduct the final assault on the Earth's destiny...or destroy the destroyers themselves.

In 1812, 12-year-old Art is a boy filled with wanderlust and raw courage. He runs away from home to begin a journey from Ohio westward. Along the way, he’ll run up against badlands and bad men. He’ll lose his freedom, gain his freedom, fight in the bloody Battle of New Orleans and learn the first rule of the frontier: do whatever it takes to survive. With ruthless enemies after him - both white men and Indians - Art will head for a place as brutal as it is beautiful - the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains.

In the nuke-altered region of the Great Lakes, Ryan and his group face the spectrum — from the idyllic to the horrific — of a world reborn. Close to enclaves of peace and sanctuary, Deathlands' most distorted spawn of humanity, cannibals, spread terror. Against the battered shoreline of Lake Michigan, an encounter with an old friend leads to a battle to save Milwaukee from a force of deadly mutant interlopers — and to liberate one of their own.

Not everyone can take on the things that go bump in the night. Not everyone tries. But Jill Kismet is not just anyone. She's a Hunter, trained by the best - and in over her head. Welcome to the night shift....

Vance Brewster is a hardworking young cowboy. Stovepipe and Wilbur are two new ranch hands working at his side. And all three are caught up in a brewing, trigger-happy Montana range war between the Rafter M and Three Rivers. Then the fury suddenly explodes - in a hail of gunfire, the three men must show their hands: they're all hiding their true identities. With Vance falling in love with the daughter of the Three Rivers manager, and Stovepipe and Wilbur paid by a tycoon who needs the violence to stop, all three are in mortal danger.

Smoke Jensen has seen the worst that men can do on the lawless frontier. But even the mountain man is not prepared for the outlaw band that strikes Smoke’s ranch, kidnapping Sally and the daughter of Smoke’s neighbor. Now, the women are gone and a ranch hand and his young daughter are dead.