Dramatized Adaptation Fantasy

Taken captive on a ship in the former Caribbean, Ryan and his companions must work as part of the crew or perish at the hands of the captain. But the mutant in charge of the vessel is the least of their worries. Each day is a struggle as they face rivalry among the sailors, violent attacks, and deadly storms. Worse, a powerful enemy is hunting the ship to destroy everyone on board. Fighting for their lives and those of their shipmates, the companions must find unity within the chaos or die in the attempt.

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.

In the time of the Crusades, the Knights Templars were holy warriors who seemed to be blessed by God himself. But over the years, the order dissolved into mysteries both sacred and profane — creating an object whose power bends to the true nature of its owner.... But until she held it in her hands, archaeologist Annja Creed hadn't heard of the Skull of Sidon nor the twisted tale of its origins. Even now, she's still not convinced. Yet someone wants it badly enough to hire a man who wields power beyond her imagining.

Miles beneath the ocean's surface, a decaying redoubt barely protects Ryan and his companions from a watery death. Battling vicious assaults from cyborgs programmed by artificial intelligence to kill them, they're desperate to escape this underwater trap. But above the waves, a new threat awaits: a massive predark super ship banished to the seas of Deathlands. Decades of madness have led to civil war between the citizens of the upper and lower decks. Now pawns in a bloody game, Ryan and the other survivors must destroy the ship or face their certain end at sea.

Hungry and exhausted, Ryan and his band emerge from a redoubt into a remarkably untouched pre-dark city and uncover a cache of weapons and food. But the group is not alone. Among other interlopers, the city is guarded by huge winged creatures, protecting the grisly secrets of a nearby barony. Holed up inside an old government building, where Ryan's son, Dean, lies near death, Ryan and Krysty must raid the treacherous ville across the desert where a local baron uses human flesh as fertilizer.

My name is Zachary Nixon Johnson. The year is 2057, and after a handful of species-altering upheavals, Earth-shattering cataclysms, history-changing extraterrestrial contacts, and pop-culture disasters, the world is now a pretty safe place. But, of course, as in times past, people still run the shades-of-gray gamut from good to evil. There are still cops and robbers, saints and sinners, voters and politicians. And every once in a while some crazy thing happens that threatens all of society, all of humanity, even the entire space-time continuum. And it always happens on my watch.

Desperate to find water and shelter on the barren plains of former Oklahoma, Ryan and his team come upon a community that appears, at first, to be peaceful. Then the ville is attacked by a group of its own inhabitants — people infected with a parasite that has turned them into slave warriors for an unknown overlord. The companions try to help fend off the enemy and protect the remaining population, but when Ryan is captured during a second ambush, all hope seems lost. Especially when he launches an assault against his own crew.

But the future in a world shrouded in the radioactive red dust clouds of a generation-old global nuclear war depends on finding hidden caches of food, weapons and technology - the legacy of a preholocaust society - stashed in lonely outposts known as redoubts. When Ryan Cawdor discovers a redoubt in the bitter freakish wasteland that now passes for Alaska, he also uncovers a new threat to a slowly reemerging America.

A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief - she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust, but no people...and no answers.

The endless struggle for power among the barons is a way of life in Deathlands, but Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists take no sides — unless forced to. But as the land around the Rio Grande reaches the breaking point in a bitter war, the companions are harnessed into battle, moving toward a grim confrontation with an old enemy whose secret stockpile of 21st-century nerve gas is poised to unleash infinite madness once more upon a ravaged Earth.

Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert remains a death pit of scorching heat, cannies, and grim odds. Ryan Cawdor and his group survive the trek there, only to be drugged, robbed, and left for the slave trade. Escaping their captors leaves them alive but stripped of their prized gear: their weps, J. B. Dix's glasses, Dr. Mildred Wyeth's medical kit and, worse, her secret codex. The companions must rely on each other to challenge their enemy and settle the score.

Kylara Vatta is the only daughter in a family full of sons, and her father's only child to buck tradition by choosing a military career instead of joining the family business. For Ky, it's no contest: Even running the prestigious Vatta Transport Ltd. shipping concern can't hold a candle to shipping out as an officer aboard an interstellar cruiser. It's adventure, not commerce, that stirs her soul. And despite her family's misgivings, there can be no doubt that a Vatta in the service will prove a valuable asset. But with a single error in judgment, it all comes crumbling down.

Jon-Tom has been trapped in a strange land of talking owls and wizarding turtles for a year now, his sole consolation that in this universe his musical abilities have inadvertently made him something of a sorcerer. But when an encounter with some burglars leads to him snapping the magical duar that channels his power, he finds himself an ordinary human again — on a quest to repair his instrument with nothing but his staff and his semi-faithful, ever-complaining otter sidekick to defend him.

M. Savage - or Em, as she is called - has made a bewildering and ominous discovery. She and the other young people she was chosen to lead awoke in strange coffins with no memory of their names or their pasts. They faced an empty, unknown place of twisting tunnels and human bones. With only one another to depend on, they searched for answers and found the truth about their terrifying fate. Confronted by a monstrous enemy, they vowed never to surrender - and, by any means, to survive.

Magus is a steel-eyed cybernetic sociopath whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Now, the savage Pacific isles above a long-submerged Southern California are his new arena. Ryan wants a second chance to chill Magus once and for all. But as the ringmaster of torture orchestrates his magnum opus, a stunning sideshow is under way. Pre-Dark white coats believe they have found the key to turn back time and intercept the deed that erased human history.

Ryan Cawdor is a true warrior of Deathlands, fighting for survival in a bizarre, freakish world. But now, beyond the unseen perils, a new threat emerges: Invaders arrive from a parallel Earth where the nukecaust never happened. Ryan is abducted through a time corridor to the twin Earth, where he discovers a nightmare that makes Deathlands look tame by comparison — and a new plot for its grotesque destruction....

John Thomas Rourke, M.D., ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert, and survival authority is on the move again — searching for a cache of 80 megaton warhead missiles secreted on the New West Coast. It all begins with a fire fight between Brigands and a unit of US II armed forces, a battle that ends with Rourke, and a seriously wounded Natalia, taking refuge on a submarine.

Violent gangs, a corrupt mayor, and a heavily armed police force are the hallmarks of former Detroit, a mutie-infested, rubble-strewn metropolis. When Ryan and the companions show up, the Desolation Angels are waging a war to rule the streets. After saving the companions from being chilled by gangsters, the mayor hires Ryan and his friends to stop the Angels cold. But each hard blow toward victory proves there's no good side to be fighting for. As Motor City erupts into bloody conflagration, the companions are caught in the crossfire.

After shooting an episode of Chasing History's Monsters at a dig in Australia, Annja Creed is left feeling mildly unimpressed. The artifacts being uncovered are considered fringe by experts who doubt their authenticity. Annja is disappointed by the general lack of mystery involved. But her boredom is quickly replaced with fear when all that's left of her cameraman is a drop of blood on his hotel-room carpet.

JC, Happy, and Melody are investigating a haunting at the long-abandoned Haybarn Theater, which is being renovated. But work has been thrown off-schedule by some peculiar and unnatural activities and a homeless man who appears to have been scared to death. After the potentially world-altering recent events of their previous assignment at Chimera House, the team thinks that a haunted theater (aren't they all?) will be a walk in the park.