Bøker av Stephen Donald Huff

She has come to his office to give birth, but she is accursed and he knows it. Fortunately, she has chosen wisely and she can afford the best phy-magician in the country. He will safely deliver the demon inside her, and then he'll help her to determine who would cast such a spell on her in the first place. This is an age of science in magic. A phy-magician must master both trades with equal alacrity.

The mean streets of Skid Row teem with unhappy characters. Each has his or her own sordid tale to tell about their current condition and the sorry fate that deposited them there. Meet ""Narrator"", a documentary film maker who has come to interview these hapless souls. Through the lens of his camera, he hopes to improve his understanding of their plight and the struggles they confront in their daily quest for survival. His story will focus on a minor mystery with major implications. Who killed Cassandra's cat? And why?

During the final years of the Soviet Union, its government started building an ultra-secret airbase in the center of a vast wilderness. Its secrecy outstripped its management such that construction continued despite its abandonment. Occasionally, an errant aircraft drops somebody on its tarmac, and they are never seen alive again. At the end of a late night international flight from India to Russia, a weary traveler finds himself deposited in a lonely ramp of an empty terminal. As he navigates its endless gates and corridors, this hapless traveler begins to realize he has landed in no ordinary airport.

A former pro-footballer fallen from grace and bitter with his eventual fate, Johnny Bullet commits a horrible crime in the name of revenge. Running from his demons through a foreboding countryside, he hopes to escape his future, only to find it at the very far away ends of it all. He did a bad thing and then he wished himself away. Be careful what you wish for.

Every ten years, a lottery draws them from all over the country. Every lottery is always the same: four boys and three girls, each with an exceptional mind and each mired in a neglectful or abusive life, which is sure to eventually destroy them. The spooky mansion at 472 Malign Terrace will become their home and their salvation, strange and mysterious though it may seem. Neglected by his addicted mother, a mysterious lottery is the one chance this boy has for a normal life. He reports to 472 Malign Terrace alone and trembling with a strange mixture of terror and excitement.

The last frontier is not a destination of space, but of mind. Beyond the constraints and laws of human civilization, freedom is the rule and confinement the exception. Social authorities detest Far-World and all who voyage there, because therein lies the ultimate unknown, the ultimate fear, if only because that mysterious land lies far beyond mortal control. Is it pure imagination? Is it life beyond death? Because it is wonderful and strange, a rigid society long ago outlawed Far-World, but laws have never deterred a single seeker. If you plan to go there, be sure to pack a bag and plan to stay awhile.

Deep within in the guts of the world, men and women struggle daily to deliver fuel to feed ravenous industry. It is dangerous work. Indeed, this is a story about fire catching in a coal seam buried deep underground, where a dozen lives hang, choking, in the balance. Regardless of color, creed or religion, hard-rock miners work together as one to avoid perishing individually and alone down in the dark where the devil dwells.

A young, newlywed couple. A new custom home. A good life. Yet nothing can ever be perfect. When the man of the house begins to experience bizarre nightmares involving a disturbing, pantomime face appearing in his wife's voluminous closet night after night, his sanity becomes an issue. Though their evenings at home are filled with playful lovemaking in the first months spent in their lavish new dwelling, a chill begins to settle over them with the passage of time. When disturbing images and inexplicable disappearances plague a young couple in their new home, they begin to question every facet of their lives. They cannot possibly anticipate the truly horrid source of their discomfort.

Facing the hangman's noose, why not confess everything? If you've lived a notoriously colorful life, most of your stories cannot be believed! Read this confession, and make your own decisions about the veracity and implications of it all. You'll get your chance to make a final statement. Make it count.

In the first days of the zombie apocalypse, a military physician and small team of survivors must gather their wits, their weapons and their available resources to make a last stand. When nowhere seems safe and no-one seems immune to the rapidly spreading disease, they must choose a destination that is both attainable and sufficiently remote to assure their long term safety. It's a sheer stone tower standing alone over a remote frontier, as iconic as it is forbidding. It is also the location of humanity's last stand. Do zombies climb?

To be certain, there are bad men in the world, but for every fistful of male villains there exists a shrewd woman to corrupt and torment them. She is the spider at the center of a web, and they have come to struggle violently in her traps. He's as loving and caring as a Gaboon viper. She's as gracious and hospitable as a bristling spider. Choose your friends carefully.

At five years old, Tiffy is worldly beyond her age. Her disinterested mother and absent father have not wielded much influence in her life, and she roams neighborhood streets at all hours of the day and evening without supervision. Recently fleeing with her mother from yet another intervention by community advocates, she has landed next door to Mr. S, a mysterious figure with a dark past. Though his home is large and lavish, his dress impeccable, his manner beyond reproach, and his education of sterling pedigree, Mr. S is not the average neighbor. When they make fast friends, the child's life will never be the same again. Too many children share young Tiffy's lot in life as they drift from apathy to neglect and back again, their little lives lost and void of parental intervention. Too few of them encounter an advocate like Mr. S. Will he go too far to save her?

The plight of the village is desperate and dire. Once protected by a powerful shaman, their savior has grown old and decrepit, perhaps too weak to save them from a violent storm brewing on the horizon. To save them, he must perform the ritual, but will he beat the clock and conjure before she comes, the devil? Ethereal and sublime, theirs is a lust to outlast the ages. No matter what else happens, their final tempestuous passion will make for one hell of a ride!

Jermy Borden's seven short years on Planet Earth had already been filled with hardship, deprivation and heartache when, on the way to school one morning, his drunken mother drove their car into a neighbor's home, killing herself and a hamster named "Ted". Jermy somehow managed to claw his way out of the shattered rear window, leaving his hands badly burned and his fate in the hands of his only living relative, Gandy Ross, a hard-living ex-Marine with no children of his own. This is either the worst thing to ever happen to him, or the best. Has fate left this young boy in the devil's hands?

The Korengal Valley of Afghanistan was one of the most dangerous places in the world during 2008. There on a daily basis, brave Americans confronted the grim realities of a determined guerilla resistance as they opposed an all but invisible enemy exercising a ruthless determination to achieve their objectives at all costs and without heed to civilized rules of war. Using improvised explosive devices and ambush tactics, stubborn jihadists of the region worked fanatically to sap American will to fight by bleeding its forward forces white via use of the most brutal weapons on hand. Deployment there became a crapshoot of possibilities - the hapless gamblers rolling snake-eyes would die or suffer life-altering injury. Nobody served there unscathed.

A compendium of three original novellas, this is the true-to-life horror story of a boy born without a name into a lifetime of loss, suffering and sorrow. Bestially abused throughout his formative years, the boy has the appearance of a patchwork monster by the time he arrives at a notorious desert orphanage in Pecan County, Texas. Ostensibly intended to alleviate and soothe the misery of such children, he quickly discovers that Parker House is instead a diabolical nightmare of neglect, exploitation and sadism. There, the boy will travel new realms of torment in the company of his sadistic keepers, Momma and Eugene Parker, who will teach him every low art and mean skill with belt, strap and whip. Stoic and untouched by the damage done to him, the boy named Manga will only learn to live after he selflessly rescues a girl named Heaven.

He can't avoid the stench. It's everywhere... in his food... in his clothing... his home... his office. Everything swims in the odor of feces and he can't possibly know if it's all in his mind or if the entire world has gone to shit! Sometimes the brain gets cross-wired. What happens when everything smells really, really bad?

At over one hundred years old, Grandma Moses is one of America's last true, living witches. Sold into apprenticeship as a young girl and extensively schooled in the black arts, she can solve most human problems with a potion and a spell. Though she never accepts money for her services, nothing is free, and the cost rises with the value of the result. Approach her with caution and be prepared to pay! Grandma Moses lives alone near the swamp, her only company all the slimy, crawling things that flop, splash and slither there. Her reputation is as black as her soul, and her powers are prodigious.

When too many children go missing in the rivers and bayous coursing through Houston, Texas, one man draws a frightful conclusion. Gathering anecdotal evidence to support his suspicions, this amateur sleuth must eventually take his allegations to proper detectives, but he will only get one chance to prove his case without simultaneously inviting doubts about the state of his mental health. A mysterious fiend comes with rain, sleek as shadows and deadly as a swirling draw. In his wake, heartbreak and unending sorrow.

Somebody has to do it, and his mind is sufficiently perverse to qualify for the job. It's the age-old conundrum of time travel. It's the ultimate experiment. He packs a handgun before he steps into the time machine. What happens when a young man travels into the past to kill his own parents? Hello, father. Hello, mother. Good-bye, Thaddeus.

It's Halloween in Pecan Groves, Texas and much mischief is afoot. In the midst of the morbid celebration manifests an otherworldly invasion. How could the citizens of that sleepy bedroom community separate costumes from the genuine horror that has come among them? When the smoke clears, few will be able to explain resultant mass disappearances among the population. Fewer still will believe. Introducing Pecan Groves, Texas. Oh, the mischief that transpires in that sleepy little town!

Humankind totters on the brink of extinction. Soon, a superior alien race will dominate Earth. Our greatest hope lies within the ranks of an elite cadre of anonymous combatants called Ghost Warriors. He is of that number. All but mortally wounded, he has crawled into a hidden hole to heal. When he rises again, alien blood will flow! He's the last survivor. And he's pissed!

He is Hate Equinox. She is Loathing Solstice. He is dark of eye and complexion, while she has ivory skin, white hair and a diamond blue gaze. Though they both come from the same community of pagans, they are polar opposites. Growing up together in public schools, each strives to outdo the other, but neither manages to successfully dominate. In time, they graduate high school and then attend different universities, enjoying a parting of ways. Many years later, their fates converge and the sparks fly. Given the conspiracy of proper circumstance and much time, mortal enemies may occasionally become violent lovers. When Hate and Loathing collide, will the result be love or war?

In the not-so-distant future, professional life is reduced to help-desk duty, the workweek is eight hours long, and the average citizen lives a leisurely lifestyle. When an inconceivable glitch named 'Ed' appears mysteriously within the ubiquitous network, however, a global revolution becomes unavoidable. Ed stepped out onto the web, naked as pure energy. It's a better way of life.

When the constraints of the mission make it impossible to use electronics or cameras, they send him. His memory is eidetic. "Photographic". His infallible mind is simultaneously his most blessed gift and his most devilish curse, because nothing is more haunting and vengeful than memory. His is a graveyard of murdered faces.

Whatever happened to the people next door? They were so loud and obnoxious, it's difficult to ignore their abrupt, unannounced departure. The neighborhood is lucky to have the old man at the end of the cul-de-sac, though. If not for his constant care, that abandoned home might have long ago gone to seed and become an eyesore. He keeps the lawn and the landscaping at no charge. You could learn to love this neighbor, but this would be a grave mistake.

This is reality television run amok, daytime programming in the bloody Roman Coliseum. Survival is the game and vast wealth the reward. What of the hapless individuals tossed together into competition? Can they retain their humanity and still do what it takes to win? When defeat is death, does this difference matter? Fun and games in the depths of a hostile rain forest. It's every man, and woman, for themselves!

When their yacht sinks just east of New Zealand during a round-the-world sailing trip, three survivors somehow manage to pile themselves into a single tiny life raft. Adrift on one of the wildest seas in the world, their struggle to survive is a desperate one, and their hopes for rescue dwindle daily. Many weeks later, a violent storm sweeps them into the frigid and dangerous Antarctic current, and they realize they will ultimately freeze if they are not rescued before winter comes. As their anger and frustrations grow, they know they must take matters into their own hands if they are to survive. Antarctica is one of the last wild places left on Earth, and it undoubtedly harbors exciting secrets waiting to be discovered. These hapless castaways will experience its darkest threats.

How long can one sensitive youth tolerate the incessant shelling, the nerve-wracking eruptions, the slumber-slaying shockwaves of bombardment? How much terror can a soldier endure before he takes that last short walk beyond the trenches and coiled barbed wire into no-man's land to meet his violent fate? The bloodiest war of the bloodiest century in human history. For some, it never ends.

On the verge of a bloody and catastrophic defeat, a lone surviving robot tech risks life and limb to maneuver to the frontlines and activate an army of machines. Though these metallic monsters have failed in the past, this time their success would be utter and complete. Too complete. These machines are harbingers of global apocalypse and genocide. Be careful what you wish for, because not all is fair in love and war.