Böcker av Jude LaHaye

Rapture, or Heaven, is one of the six lower worlds in human existence. So say the Buddhists. Rapture sounds heavenly, but it is a temporary life condition. It gives extreme pleasure which does not last. And yet, many human beings chase Rapture for lifetimes. They allow it to become their dominant world. Meet one such human being, Peter Michael Blanton. Meet the creature who rules his psyche, the orangutan Pongo, who tries to promote the four higher worlds to young Peter...and fails. For Peter's psyche has fallen prey to the world of Rapture and her fellows, the other five lower worlds: Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger...and Humanity. Peter, of course, is not alone in the world. He has adoptive parents, he has a gifted counsellor...and he has a birth family which comes from Hell, itself. Could anyone in Peter's situation overcome such dire circumstance? Come with him, grow with him, and ponder the answer to this question.

Dr. Albert Clarke has been on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry three times. He's brilliant. He also has seventeen children and a house that is much too small for them. He maintains a laboratory in the basement of the house where he has perfected a way to extract the phsyche, or "essence" of a human being and put it into storage. He then reduces the components of the physical remains and stores them separately. According to Dr. Clarke, a "Person" is the combination of both the physical body and its spiritual essence; without the spirit, the body is merely a Product. Dr. Clarke uses his Product: Person protocol to rotate his children into and out of storage to keep his household manageable. His wife, Phyllis, manages the problems the rotation causes with school, medical, and dental societal requirements. The Product: Person protocol has supported the enormous family successfully for years. Then one morning, Dr. Clarke dresses his eight-year-old son, Larry and sends him upstairs to greet his mother: he has just been "decanted" and restored to the land of the living. When Larry runs into the kitchen to throw his arms around his mother, she says, "Oh, Larry! I am so glad to see you again, sweetie!" Larry stops dead in his tracks, involuntary tears starting from his eyes. "But Mom," he says. "It's me, Katie!" Oh dear. Looks like there's been a mishap in the lab, one with world-changing potential...

Sharon Hayes is back with a vengeance...and she's not alone. The voice in her head has given her some dire information: when Sharon killed her father, only his body died. His spirit has taken up residence in her head, and it's already crowded enough. Dewayne Doyle, Sharon's birth father, has always been an evil man, but now he is a malevolent spirit. Sharon turns to her partner at the NYPD Bronx Central Homicide squad: Archie Chong. She confides her terrible secret to Archie, who doesn't blink an eye. "I will call on my fangxiangshi spirit," he says. "We will have an exorcism." Archie has learned the skills of ancient China from his father; it's his side gig after work as a homicide detective, after all. Dewey Doyle is not their only problem. His very much alive cohorts in crime are still afoot, and they've each captured some innocent souls during their years as brutisha and vicious serial killers. They have picked up some not-so-innocent passengers, too, and as the story climaxes, Sharon, and her allies discover the source of their power to possess the souls of those they kill: some very old gods are still in the world, turning evil men to their wills. Will Archie's ancient magic be a match for their power?

Ceres is the largest asteroid in our solar system. Its neighbor, a smaller asteroid named Venice, has been colonized by human beings fleeing atoxic Earth environment. Ceres is also the chosen name of the colony's most preeminent psychiatrist. While he maintains a public professional decorum, Ceres is privately a very selfish and self-serving man, one who seeks immortality for himself. He plays with people. He manipulates them. He forces his custom pharmaceuticals on them, all in his search for eternal life. An accident with one of his patients causes him to discover something almost as fantastic as immortality: one of his patients travels in time...backwards, to Earth's early human civilization...while she appears to be comatose. Further experimentation reveals that his new concoction allows his patients to swap personalities with people residing in that past world. Another secret is revealed: the patients can only swap minds with their own incarnations from that world. After several successful transfers, Ceres decides to try it himself, only to discover that his incarnation in this time and world does not lead a life worth living. Frustration and bruised pride set Ceres off on other plots to influence and even harm the lives of the asteroid's denizens. He has gone mad.

Our young protagonists from "Stoned" return for another Egyptian adventure, and yes, the Friends of the Stones are also along for the ride again. Readers of "Stoned" will recognize Rachel (Rock) Beane and Ned Peters as our twenty-something copy editors at Monolith Press on the Upper West Side of Manhattan...actually, readers of "Stoned" will recognize all of the characters, both stone and human in this sequel until "Stoned, Too" takes them somewhere dark: ancient Egyptian magic is afoot, as is the discovery of an ancient murder mystery: Tutenkhamun, the Boy King, did not meet an accidental death after all. He was murdered nearly thirty-four hundred years ago. Rock and Ned, who possess the unique and powerful skill of rock catalysts...meaning they can bring stones to life...are pulled into another adventure by the evil forces of the priests of Ptah. The Ptah priesthood still searches for the remains of the Heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten. They are sworn to destroy his remains and to deface his tomb...including destroying any and all record of his having existed. This is how they will prevent him from existing in the Afterlife...or from ever returning to Earth. There is a basic flaw in their plan: Akhenaten lives. He has not returned from the Afterlife; he never died at all, but was preserved in a living stone sarcophagus until his revival in "Stoned." As Tutenkhamun's father, he is grief-stricken and outraged to learn of his son's final days...and is hell bent on discovering the murderers and extracting revenge. Join the team of young and old humans, and their friends, the living stones, as they confront the Ptah priesthood in this new fight, a fight not to the death, but rather for their lives.

Sharon Hayes returns to the Bronx Central, NYPD, Homicide Division intending to beg for her old job back. Her old partner, Art Banks, is now in charge of the division. She walks into his office preparing to plead her case when Art says, without looking up from his desk, "You're hired." Sharon easily slips back into her old job, but she needs a new partner. Nikki Nobles, all 6'8" of her is waiting in the squadroom. Sharon takes an immediate liking to Nikki and finds herself blurting, "I am going to need a new parter." And that's all it takes. Sharon, or "Styx" as her friends call her, and Nikki are now partners. Their first case, the grisly murder of an aged but very well preserved prostitute, leads them to a very tangled web of serial murders and more: there is ritual involved in each murder case they uncover. The dead prostitute turns out to have had several previous identities, each of which can be traced to murder and mayhem going back fifty years and more. They find themselves workig with the U.S. Marshalls, Marshall Drew Dryer by name, and Sharon picks up on something odd between Nikki and Drew...do they know each other? Are they working to solve the crimes or cover them up? Working with Val Smyth-Colson, the voice in her head, Styx plies her detective skills to determine what exactly is going on, and finds it. And where would this search eventually end? Why, with her murderous and demented birth father, of course: Denny Doyle is back, and he is not alone...

Homicide Detective Sharon Hayes is back, but she has quit the NYPD and has hung out her own shingle. Her first case: her own. She has questions, lots of questions about what happened to her, her parents, her boss (and godfather), and her now dead relationship with Jimmy James, the forensics wunderkind. She decides to seek professional help and finds a psychiatrist who specializes in regression, using hypnotherapy. Sharon is convinced the answers she seeks are buried deep within her own brain...along with a thirty-something British woman who has been with her for as long as she can remember. The woman in her head used to be quiet, but since Sharon launched a career in crime-solving, she has become pushy and even verbally abusive. Sharon does not want Dr. Ronald Black to find her secret companion. She doesn't know that he found her in their first session and is grooming her to partner with him in publishing a major study that will catapult him into fame...and fortune. Sharon has to find her own cases at this point: she doesn't have much of a budget for advertising at this point in her solo career. She finds a trend she feels merits investigating: the murders, seeming unrelated, of several young women in the suburban area north of the Bronx, her stomping grounds. As she develops her case and is closing in on a suspect, she becomes entangled with dangerously sick and depraved criminals who wouldn't think twice about eliminating her...and she walks perilously close to their traps, unaware that her introduction to Dr. Black is a move which pulls her further into danger. She gets tough advice from the voice in her head. Will she take it and save both of them?

"True Self" is a crime story told in the first person of a Detective Sharon Hayes, "Styx" to her loved ones, and just "Hayes" for everyone else. There aren't a lot of people who call her "Styx". Hayes has a knack for investigating and solving crime. She gets "hunches". Her "hunches" are uncanny instincts that usually lead to some break-through in an investigation. Her record of successfully concluding investigations in the Central Bronx Precinct's Vice Squad has just earned her a transfer to the Homicide Squad, a challenge she dives into on her very first case: the murder of Juan Julio Santiago, a female impersonator and recovering alcoholic. Hayes' instincts quickly lead her to discovering that there are ten ostensibly unrelated murders which are, in fact, related to each other. She is able to convince the squad and its Lieutenant, Dave Speers, that each of the murders appears to be different because they are actually scripted for a series of pornographic "snuff" films. She works with an exceptionally experienced team to run down leads and build a strong case which upholds her theory - while being threatened by an anonymous correspondent and knocked around and sexually assaulted by her own husband. Hayes is complicated. The story culminates in her abduction by the very people she is investigating. She is close to becoming a star in her own "snuff" recording when she receives help from an old friend...and a new one. Her troubles are not over, however, as she experiences more threats while she is in the hospital recovering from her trauma. As these experiences take her between life and death, we get a glimpse of the world she returns to between lives. It is a blissful garden of delights, at least until the moment where she is hauled back to her place and time by the talented medical team resuscitating her. "True Self" is a story of motives and outcomes. Or "Cause and Effect", if you prefer. It is one distinct story contained in the larger reality of reincarnations. It is a story frozen in a single location and time amongst universes of such. It is a story that provokes thought. Contemplation. Perhaps a shift in beliefs.

All flesh dies, but the essence of the human being is eternal. Eternity is one of those terms human beings can't get their heads around, but it's real and their eternal essences swim in it, returning to new life by their own volition. In "A Life", we examine one such essence through its lifetimes on the planet Earth. This particular essence experiences grave difficulties in overcoming its animality, however, and in life after life it suffers...and yet, it returns. It returns to try again and again. Though not particularly cheerful, we hope "A Life" will be thought provoking...enjoy.

Noom was nameless before he approached the planet Earth; nameless and eternal. Through an evil act of sabotage against Eternity, two creatures at the core of the Universe touched one another and unleased a cataclysmic explosion that birthed both the expanding Universe...and Time. Time did not exist in Etermity, and Noom is determined to locate it, capture it, and shove it back into the hole it came from. So, the name: as Noom detected traces of the evil one on the planet he neared, he heard a sound emanating from one of the planet's land masses. It called to him; he felt it welcomed him to the new planet. "Noom," it wailed, over and over again. "Noom," he repeated. "I shall be Noom." Noom's search on Earth takes him to North Korea, Washington, D.C., and Australia, where he discovers the instrument which gave him his name. He interacts with the humanity he meets in those places and learns. Since he is basically incorporeal, he can inhabit things, both animate and inanimate. Noom discovers some wonderful and not-so-wonderful people in his travels...and finds other Eternals on the planet, too. Are they who he seeks? If not, what are they doing on this little backwater world? Travel with Noom and find out.

Tilde Colon hates her name and the two English Majors who gave it to her: her parents. She seems an incomplete person, totally absorbed in herself, but dismissive and judgmental about other people in her environment: she is a high school student, fifteen years old...and a loner. No, wait, she has just made an acquaintance, a boy named Jake - Jacob White - who is as much a misfit as she is.What makes a young perople with promising futures embrace an idea as destructive, vicious, and final as a school shooting? For that is what Tilde and Jake talk about incessently...that, and how much they despise their fellow students and teachers.They are both so normal in appearance as to be invisible. Neither of them has a distinguishing feature; they are drab and dress in a shabby goth style. Black. They wear black.When Tilde gets impatient with just talking, she steers Jake toward acquiring the hardware they are going to need to carry out their vengeance on an uncaring world. He has means; Tilde provides the motive. Together they create an opportunity...

The Mongols invaded Japan for the first time in 1274. In the aftermath of the bloody invasion, survivors attempt to overcome their horror and grief to cobble together a strategy to live, to thrive. Wakou is a story of such people. It is also a story about medieval Japan society, religion, and traditions, including the very real presence of demons, both terrifying and protective. Wakou is Japanese for pirate, and pirating is the strategy our protagonists have chosen for their lives. Rin is one such survivor. She has lived in the woods and combs the beach of her home island, Tsushima, since the Mongols murdered her parents and burnt their home to the ground. She is not alone...Rin has gained a protective demon: Moritaka. To others' eyes, Moritaka is a young girl much like Rin. Rin calls her Sameko, or "Little Shark" because of her grey skin and her sharp little teeth. Make Sameko angry, however, or threaten Rin in any way, and Moritaka emerges in his true form: he's huge. He's blue. He is strong, so strong. And a deadly danger to any who stand in his way. Rin rediscovers her uncle, Zamakitsune, and is invited to join him and the crew he has assembled: they will be pirates! Sameko's eyes light up and she licks her narrow lips. This is going to be fun.

Chance Bonner awakens one morning shouting out the name of a fictional-and alien -character he had invented in a story he had written months before. In his short story, the character had been his unknown twin brother. His outburst is witnessed by one of the denizens of his psyche, who protects this knowledge, instinctively knowing that this event is not borne from Chance's imagination, but in fact, arises from his awesome intuition: Chance must have a twin somewhere in this world. As an unsuspecting Chance descends the stairs from his bedroom to his kitchen, he is totally unaware that the creatures residing in his own mind have now targeted his mother as his weak link. They strive to undermine her self-confidence-and her Buddhist faith. Their goal? To use Nan Bonner, Chance's mother, to undermine Chance's own confidence and courage. Join us in another epic battle between Chance Bonner and the elemental forces, both internal and universal, which strive to destroy his happiness...and his future. In this episode something huge is introduced: chaos.

Chance Bonner is an American boy with an existential secret he is about to discover: he is living his life backwards. He is in his first incarnation, and has already found the correct practice, the Buddhism of the Sun. His mother taught him about this philosophy and its daily recitation of sections of the sacred sutra. As these facts of his early life demonstrate, Chance is very, very lucky. It's karma, actually, and his is extremely good. But is it good enough to enable him to stand alone, combat, and defeat the various negative forces of the Universe which arise to confront him? To confound his every effort to develop into an upstanding human being? To even kill him if they cannot destroy his spirit-his luck? He must first determine what these forces are and where they originate. Without this knowledge, all of his efforts will be futile.

Mankind has fled to the Asteroid Belt to escape its bloating red sun. Humanity has evolved-it had to in order to survive...and now? Now there's a new threat. Human beings from a parallel universe have discovered how to create and use gateways-portals-between universes to travel. To make contact. To attack. To steal the dark energy which buffers one universe from another. This story is not about the future of one world, but rather the fate of an infinite number of worlds, all parallel to our own.