Böcker av Stephen Donald Huff

In the not-so-distant future, human beings are reduced to commodities; components too easily replaced. Everyone has their place and life is at least livable, provided the machine encounters no errors or glitches. This is the story of one such glitch and the horrifying freedom it produces for a simple human cog. We're all consumers. Cogs in a vast machine. Let's hope we remain a vital, integral part of it all.

Tired of the endless lies of youth and the unfulfilled promises of adulthood, one man decides to put reality to the ultimate test. Standing in line at a bank to make a final withdrawal with a handgun in his pocket, he remains unconcerned when a gang of criminals burst into the lobby. After all, they still believe in the lies he has long since abandoned, and he is of the violent kind. He's bound to snap and today is the day. Sometimes goodness spoils the bad.

Every man who murders his wife and every wife who murders her husband does so with the firm belief that they will never be caught, although this belief belies the inevitably obvious suspect. From time to time, however, chance mates with fortune to present the perfect crime. She's worth a life and the price of a bullet. He will risk all for one selfish act of violence.

Jo-Jo's father died young and his mother, while present, could not pick up the slack. It's not easy to raise an unguided young man of high school age, especially a young man as misunderstood as Jo-Jo. The last day of school will forever change everyone who experiences it. Life is too short to mourn the dead forever. In a smile, a frown. In laughter, sorrow. Today is Jo-Jo's "Big Day".

He drives a specially modified Snow Cat, shuttling roughnecks to the wildest gas fields on Earth, which are situated along a frozen peninsula in the far northern wastes of Siberia. For decades, he has simultaneously battled the elements and violent bandits, but he must now confront the most difficult test of his life. After a global catastrophe, he is perhaps one of the last men left alive, but he survives with the hope that somehow his young daughter is waiting for him on the far side of the globe. It's the end of the world, but it's not the end of "Lucky Thirteen" or its tenacious driver.

Like an onion, his plan for her conquest is multi-layered and complex. First, he must educate himself, then he must use that education to accumulate wealth. Finally, he must find a way to enter into her life as an equal. In the meantime, he can always jog alongside her in the park, just another stranger on the trail. In truth, he loved her from first sight and determined to have her despite his poverty and her wealth. Fortunately, he is a very clever young man.

A marauding legion of starving aliens arrive on Earth for a brief but terrifying raid on the planet. For a few unbelievably deadly days they will hunt humankind to fill their larder before they can continue on their indeterminate journey. Though the invaders are impervious to most human defenses, one man finds safety with a household pet! They are many and they are hungry. Human beings are defenseless. You never needed a cat so badly!

Heaven has gone missing from Sanctum and the boy named Manga must somehow rescue her from the malign possession of Momma Parker and her demented husband. Gathering the aid of new friends, Kincaid and Gene-Jeannie, he will stage a first violent revolt against his detested abusers. Time is short and hardships are many. Only hours remain to bring Heaven home alive.

One morning on a vacation with this extended family, all bound to watch the patriarch run his first marathon, Mortimer witnesses a terrible crime. In the intervening minutes, a small child's fate hangs on his capacity to sprint. He will risk everything in his old age to set things straight! He's no hero. He's retired and has nothing better to do. Run, daddy, run!

In this vision of the future, the most prestigious vacation money can buy is a trip to a corporate planet overgrown with a jungle wilderness. There, wealthy tourists gird armor and fantastically powerful weapons to hunt strange chimeras through an endless forest. These beasts are all genetically engineered to be fierce, bloodthirsty, and difficult to kill. Despite the benefits of their high technology, only experienced guides can lead their pampered clients safely through to the end of the game. Every year, countless bored tourists pay exorbitant fees to hunt terrifying synthetic monsters engineered to be extremely lethal and difficult to kill. On a shout of ""RECOM!"", instinctively turn to fight or run for your life!

They are five rough characters in service of the mysterious and powerful Heart Witch of the Gods. She has tasked them to enshrine the latest acolytes of her Sinister Profligate Palm, a jewel-encrusted platinum talisman of unknown power. Follow them through benighted crevasses of the nation on a quest to recruit their sinister counterparts from the ranks of underworld outcasts, vagabonds and felons. A career burglar, doomed prostitute, football player rapist, psychotic teen, and precognitive child form an unholy alliance. What comes next?

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 untold centuries, a mysterious collection of bizarre artifacts would reveal the truth behind their curious circumstance. When a powerful, unavoidable cosmic apocalypse irradiated the entire planet, every living creature succumbed. Yet, all were spared a natural death. Why?

Nightland resides within an extraordinary region of time and space bound only by limits of sheer imagination. Its ephemeral pinnacles soar near the apex of human aspiration while its abysmal valleys plunge deeply into the darkest landscapes of global apocalypse. It is alternately violently wild and oppressively regimented. Nightland is older than all of recorded human history and it is many things to come. Remember the past with a robust, bloody gaze when you read "Saga of the Never Seen" and "The Templar Chalice". Linger there awhile to ponder a few of our most disturbing ancestors with "Mordrake's Whisper" and "Bloody Cain". Step away from the doldrums of contemporary political correctness to witness the old-fashioned Freak Show of "Nightland, Incorporated" and "Harkonen", and then delve into the depths of human evil in "Ever for Her", "Spook", "Gem's Machine", and "The Chacmool Sacrifice". Finally, allow your imagination to run wild through the hinterlands of Nightland, where "Rats!" and "Skitters" rule and there find your inner freak among the denizens of "Second-Kind" and "Interior Spaces".

It is lush, vibrant, and ever-changing. Though raucous and overgrown with a breathtaking variety of savory, beautiful delights, it is a deliberate expression of harsh discipline. Its keeper is a lonely old woman with a green thumb who seems harmless enough to the uninitiated. When a vagrant takes shelter in this garden, however, he learns the unspeakably evil source of her success with all things green and growing. Be careful when you wish. Homeless and wandering through a neglectful city, he ultimately finds his place in this world, tending its garden of evil.

He is an escaped slave who traveled north to learn things men should not know. After accumulating a lifetime of esoteric knowledge and expertise in wicked magic, he has returned home to free his granddaughter from the exploitative grip of the south. There will be hell to pay, when paw-paw conjures! With the right words at the right time, magic is possible. Paw-paw knows.

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.

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 secret survive it.

Not everyone in war-torn Europe believed in bigotry and hatred. A few human beings remained, hidden and camouflaged within the guise of Nazism and fanaticism. This is the story of one such old man, a railyard, and tiny scraps of paper drifting on the wind, each bearing a desperate last message from the dead. This really happened. It didn't have to happen, but it really, really did.

Zuzu is a futuristic time clipper, a spacecraft capable of zapping backward and forward in time. As it embarks on its latest combat mission, one of its crew smuggles a forbidden keepsake onboard. This is a rose-shaped medallion given to him by his youngest daughter. After a spectacular military victory, he finds the petals missing, along with the entire population of his home world. Can he alter space and time to return his family to the present? The smallest things count in large amounts given sufficient time. Worry for the tiniest details of a thing, for these trifles sometimes bury the truth.

Imagine the evilest person on Earth, someone who will eventually grow up to lead a vast slaughter of humanity. Now imagine that person as a small child. Could you kill her in her youthful innocence, empowered only by your understanding of what she might one day become? What might have happened if someone had murdered Adolph Hitler as a child? Can one conflicted agent pull the trigger on an infant to avoid Armageddon?

He has perfected the necessary skills, collected the requisite equipment, and buried the resultant bodies. Like a grotesque human hermit crab, he periodically sheds one shell for another, gutting the original to make it his own, and no regard whatever for previous ownership. Fluid and untouchable, he stalks the nation, forever in pursuit of his next lifetime, and nobody knows his name. A ruthless master of disguises, he lives many lives. Maybe one of them will be yours.

Black eyeliner, lashes, lips and hair. Ghostly pale skin. This is 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, head-mistress of her all-girls boarding school, Darling is no stranger to hardship and unquiet spirits.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! Of course, Darling Girl's holidays are never so easy and a ghost with a serious problem is certain to spoil her fun!

Take away all a man has. Burn away every sense but that of pain. Blow away the ashes of everything he once was and will no longer be. What remains? Something deadly. Make a man into such a thing, and you make him into something worse than an animal. Such a creature is capable of anything, since it is willing to do anything. Become anything. Anything it has to be to end its suffering and die properly. After a terrible crime, Maxwell Deem chooses the divergent pathway of revenge. With a laser-beam focus, he identifies his targets and then cuts straight to the kill. Sun hot. Blinding white. Unstoppable.

He is the most prolific sniper in a long, deadly war. In fact, he succeeds to the point that his own comrades have learned to shun him. Not even this form of isolation can prevent him from compiling a frightful tally of numbers though. Behind each number, a face and a name. It's his job. He's good at it. Too damned good.

He was a child prodigy born with an irrepressible genius. He grew into a clever sociopath. When he graduated at the top of his class at a remarkably young age, the U.S. government recruited him directly out of the university and assigned him to a top-secret project entitled "Ogre", the man-eating giant of mythology and folklore. As he rose through the ranks of government service, he learned to adapt the incredible power of Ogre to his personal benefit. Caught, he must pay a terrible price for his crimes. "Project Ogre" is the most powerful information-gathering computer system ever constructed for the U.S. government and it is being run by a sociopath. How far will he go to escape justice?

Football is big business in the United States, but it plays largest in Texas. In Texas, football money is BIG money, and the best players start young. During high school, college scouts come calling, but they're only seeking winners. Nobody likes to lose. Least of all, the most promising sportsman ever to play for Pecan Groves High School. King Charlemagne Ebersol. The booster club and the team coach will stop at nothing to put him on the field. Due to past scandals, the local high school plays under court-ordered supervision. How far will they go to recruit the King of youth football?

He's the proverbial grumpy old man and he ruthlessly keeps his hit-lists. You had better hope he never jots your name down in his notebook, because he'll make you the object of his obsessive ire and his dissatisfaction is notoriously relentless. Unfortunately, today is his last day on Earth... and god just made the list!

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!

Every day, we confront ourselves in mirrors of various shapes and sizes. We stare into them and our reflection stares back. Within these visions, everything about our reflection is backward, opposite, and reversed. Laws of physics prevent one side from emerging into the other, but we all wonder how far those renditions of reality might go. We wonder about life on the other side. How far does our mirror's reflection imitate reality? If we could crossover to the other side, what might happen when in the twain we and our reflections meet?

A city viewed from a jet liner is eerily indistinguishable from a vast, sprawling anthill. Both are industrious mounds riddled with innumerable burrows and endless trails, which endlessly crawl with toiling creatures, all bound from one mysterious errand to another. Amid the daily crush, a hapless drone occasionally awakens to question the drudgery of its existence. Within the hive, none can help him differentiate himself, man from ant.