Mostrando resultados por autor "Stephen Donald Huff" en Todas las categorías

A special agent with a special job, he's the janitor of all the unhappy, unpleasant, bleeding places of the world. He'll clean up your messes and leave nary a living witness in the muck that remains. Man, woman and child, his conscience is absent, his drive is relentless, and his soul is a ravenous void. Cyclic rates of cannon fire and napalm. Cluster bombs and poison gas. Ever the calm, cool professional, he feels nothing. He is nothing.

Every stellar rise deserves a cosmic fall. Inhumanly callous and ruthlessly selfish, he made a fortune in predatory mortgage loans prior to the economic collapse of 2008. In its calamitous aftermath, executive handlers staged him for a corporate patsy and left him to answer alone for their collective crimes. Facing financial ruin and certain incarceration, his reduced prospects force him to move his family into a rat-infested bungalow. In the aftermath of his ruin, one man’s family confronts an epic plague of vermin when they move into a modest country home. They have all the benefits of ...

While we collectively fear wild animals and muggers, most contemporary plagues come in the guise of unavoidable corporate logos and unforgettable commercial jingles. This new and most modern form of disease presents symptoms that include unhealthy obsessions, unwise compulsions and preprogrammed responses, all accompanied by an irrepressible tune that inevitably drives a rational mind to the very brink of lunacy. Visualize anything except the latest fad slogan while engrossing yourself in a moment of hysteric interest, and then pause to think. Of dreamscape dominions wrought from the felt ...

Boogeymen, banshees, werewolves and vampires; all figments of horror drawn upon parchments of fable, each the scrawl of individual phobias revisited by trembling quills dipped into inkwells of collective nightmare. Despite vaguely amusing caricatures, these monstrous legends probably developed from grisly human origins. Indeed, we confront our violent primitives in every new atrocity, and each murder teaches a simple lesson that humankind consistently resists. Consequently, we forever lack viable means for exorcising so-called ‘inner demons’. Even now, your secret devil whispers into ...

Peddlers and snake oil, pimps and pornography, lunatics and paranoia… each pair travels the same darkened alleyways to service identical shadow-bound gates. We receive them by the backdoor, thank you, and always well into the evening. These are private matters undertaken and clearly marked by clandestine hush and furtive sidelong glance. Sometimes concealed in the open but more often hidden in a fog of disinformation, our every secret contains a kernel of truth wrapped within a burlap of proficient lies. Patience and due diligence may unwrap the enigma to decipher a hidden message, but ...

Born to the street and abandoned by his paranoid, drug-addicted mother, a young boy struggles to evade vicious predators, who hope to exploit him, and insistent authorities, who hope to save him. His only ally is his extreme natural intelligence, and his only home is the public library. Daily, the noose tightens after his mother, his last link to childhood, goes missing. His future seems as bleak as the cold, hard streets. Then he meets Longbow. In a gritty, existential world rife with threats, a young boy fights to survive. One man has the power to save him.

On a brilliant fall afternoon, a powerful blast of energy erupted from the cosmos, burned across the solar system, and laid waste to every living thing on Earth. Notice was short and defense impossible. From the lowliest to the loftiest, none survived. This phenomenon, they called the Radiance. Curiously, however, none died, either. Instead, thereafter the hapless victims of that unavoidable catastrophe wandered the planet in a discorporate, ethereal state of existence. This, they called The Lingering. In time, as the effects of the apocalyptic radiation dissipated through the course of ...

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.

Hunted runaways fleeing bestial keepers across a desert wasteland. Bound for Sanctum. A boy named Manga. A girl named Heaven. Each a patchwork monster born of strap and stitch and scar, bestially abused but unbroken. Unbeaten. Not so badly undone that they have forsaken their sense of humanity. For they have yet to abandon all hope. This is their struggle. In love. For freedom.

Lucky to survive the circumstances of his birth, he learned to make the most of a life that might have killed a lesser person. In fact, he learned to thrive. Via crime, he improved himself to the point of obtaining a college education, an enormous bank account, and a veritable army of minions. He proves the road to hell is not always paved with the best of intentions. This is the story of his downfall and ultimate fate. Nobody escapes.

Deep within the guts of this 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 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 ...

Declared missing-in-action while serving in Afghanistan, her eldest son's disappearance left a massive whole in this mother's life. Her misery cannot be assuaged by human sympathy or the keepsakes of memories. Although he is certainly dead, she refuses to speak of it and insists he is still alive somewhere out there in the world. On her deathbed, she reveals to her family that he has been calling her every Friday when it rains. A mother's love for her children may transcend time. When it does, who can determine where reality ends and desperate fantasy begins? Only she and her son know the ...

Black eyeliner. Black lashes. Black lips. Black hair. Through it all, peers the white cake face of Darling Girl Jones, orphan. From time to time, she awakens in her academy dorm room to find an ethereal spirit haunting her bed. Never disturbing, always intriguing, such an event is a certain promise of ghoulish adventure and mortal danger. Most girly-girls might scream. Not Darling Girl. Orphaned young and, so, relegated to the care of starchy Miss Jenkins, headmistress of her all-girls boarding school, Darling is no stranger to hardship and unquiet spirits. Today, in the company of a hippy ...

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.

Black eyeliner. Black lashes. Black lips. Black hair. Through it all, peers the white cake face of Darling Girl Jones, orphan. From time to time, she awakens in her academy dorm room to find an ethereal spirit haunting her bed. Never disturbing, always intriguing, such an event is a certain promise of ghoulish adventure and mortal danger. Although today is a special day at her Academy because today is Christmas Eve - and that means all-you-can-eat pancakes with real maple syrup - Darling Girl's holidays are never so easy and a ghost with a serious problem is certain to spoil her fun!

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.

When they come to cut her out of her third-floor apartment bedroom, a crowd gathers to point and laugh. A twelve-hundred-pound woman is not without recourse, however, and they underestimate her deranged temperament to their own detriment. Before they get her to the hospital, she will leave the entire town in ruins. She is a mighty big woman originally blessed with the patient, loving disposition of a child. Years of merciless, relentless torment have purged all semblance of compassion from her heart now, and she has grown weary of the laughter. Be warned. Beware!

Has Earth been visited by extraterrestrials? Yes. They live among us today. They watch us every moment of our lives with one intensely unwavering focus: to maintain the secrecy of their presence. Their surveillance technology is unimaginable. Their control is absolute. Yet, nothing is perfect. Through the years, a few clever people have learned the truth, but this knowledge invariably bears an extreme cost: keep the secret and survive or speak the truth and die. A handful of inquisitive men and women have discovered the extraterrestrial presence among us. Those smart enough to keep the ...

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.