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

His pranks are sinister and macabre, but each one offers a critical life lesson to his hapless victims. His neighbors, coworkers, and acquaintances rarely associate their strange misfortunes with the odd young man in their midst. Yet he is always watching, always aware, and his cunning mind is inevitably filled with delightfully perverse plans for their future.

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 topped his list!

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. 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.

On a sunny afternoon, he meets the love of his life and the bane of his existence in the same event. She is beautiful, wealthy, and sweet. Unfortunately, she is also the mother of an extremely intelligent and overly protective five-year-old boy who takes enormous delight in tormenting his mother's suitors.

It's the last stop for the most violent and incorrigible prisoners in the modern Russian penal system. Famously, it is said to have two ways in and only one way out. Inmates enter its cages in an aging boat or over a dilapidated foot bridge. They exit to their graves. Yet many of its worst criminals manage to disappear when an ancient evil visits Pyatak.

He's a notorious corporate spy. His last job uncovered a disturbing truth long and deeply buried by the powers-that-be. Though his corporate enemies have kept him imprisoned by endlessly flying him around the world, he is neither forgotten nor alone. Driven to rescue one of their own, a dedicated band of hackers will stop at nothing to free him and expose his prison in the sky.

While the vast majority perishes in quiet anonymity, a tour of any national monument quickly reveals countless names carved into stone. These names generally identify three classes of people; scribe, conquered, and conqueror. Indeed, if anything, life is an endless series of contests, large and small, but these stone-graven records typically ignore the latter for the former. Pause a reflective moment to ponder the future – anticipate all the boastful elite to be immortalized there. Seeking grandeur in concrete, granite, and marble, they will tell. Such twisted threads weave life’s ...

Everyone loves a good joke, but nobody enjoys being subjected to the fun. Pranks are an especially childish form of delight, perhaps because they are the ultimate expression of prurient sadism, which we must disavow as civilized adults. We, the same civilized adults who teach our beloved youth the art of warfare while stockpiling an obscene surplus of thermonuclear weapons. Now that is funny! So, tease a guilty moment to titillate your secret sadist today. Giggling, it whispers. Such twisted threads weave life’s strange tapestry. Of pranks, here find countless examples, and of pranksters,...

Bad things happen to the people that Pablo loves. Bad, bloody things. One frustrated Texas detective believes Pablo is culpable after one fashion or another, but he can never prove these suspicions beyond reasonable doubt. Through decades of service and several promotions, a determined investigator receives an endless series of homicide cases that somehow involve Pablo. None end with a conviction.

Several of the best human hypocrisies are immortalized in catechisms. We say “violence never solved anything” when history repeatedly teaches us otherwise, and once we prematurely labeled an entire, global war as “The War to End All Wars” long before we recorded its half-formed outcome. Dynasties fall. Empires rise. In marble, granite and concrete, we immortalize these events, large and small, and we celebrate the human beings named heroes there. Rightly so. Pause a moment before The Wall – let your finger trace names in stone. From pits of despair and summits of glory, they ...

He was a child prodigy born with an irrepressible genius. When he graduated at the top of his class at a remarkably young age, the U.S. government quickly recruited him to run "Project Ogre". It's the most powerful information-gathering computer system ever constructed and it has fallen into the hands of a sociopath. How far will he go to enrich himself?

Within realms of the unknown, superstition stalks. Primitives see god in a rainbow, but they also suspect a deadly serpent beneath every unturned stone. Ignorance and fear sometimes unite to inspire us or spare us, but more often this demonic duality serves to light the torches of enraged mobs. Fearlessly now, step away from the staid, known world that shelters you. Venture into lands of conundrum and enigma to witness ciphered matters of mind. Such twisted threads weave life’s strange tapestry. Of answers, here find many startling propositions, and of mysteries, twelve.

Continuing their unlawful flight across the broad State of Texas, Corporal Terrance “Tare” McGee (retired) and his four-legged handler, Perquisite Bombdog, must evade arrest and successfully do what they need to do. Whatever that might be. Properly supplied with ample snack foods, drugs, and liquor, and having collected an endangered primate named “Bobo” along their way, they must flee south into the rugged and notoriously violent Rio Grande Valley despite their lack of ammo for Bobo’s machinegun.

Rascals, rapscallions, villains, and varlets; all terms of a bygone era intended to describe the guy in the black hat, that perverse character of low virtue and strayed morality who forever ties the distressed damsel to cold, steel rails. Gasp! Within fictional fantasies, they are always guys and damsels, and they must wear black. In reality, we still mostly read about bad ‘guys’, but the women tend to fight back now, often with devastating effect. Tonight, the devil laces thigh-high boots over fence-net stockings before taking a turn through town. Be warned and beware. Such twisted ...

Champions come in all shapes and forms. The same is true of cowards. In fact, most notable acts of heroism are not the results of well-considered, carefully laid plans. Rather, these are often spontaneous yet deliberate demonstrations of selflessness occasionally on display when normal human beings must confront life-threatening risk. Take a deep, calming breath now before you dare gaze into the face of death. Trembling, heed its heckling catcalls. Such twisted threads weave life’s strange tapestries. Of redemptions failed or delivered, here find disturbing variations, and of heroes, none.

Disinfectants, detergents, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and homicides – everything a human being needs to clear his or her lot and start fresh in life, clean and pure, and it all waits at the press of a finger. Some of us love a good disaster, but we watch from a safe distance and it always happens to someone else… somewhere else… never here. Never us. Scratch a moment, since you itch, and listen to the incessant rasp of a gathering legion. It twitters. Such twisted threads weave life’s strange tapestry. Of pests, here find a restive horde, and of plagues, ten.

A silly titmouse once sang sweetly to describe love as “a many-splendored thing”. Perhaps this is so for some. For others, love’s terrible spectacle shines in its many violent twists and unexpected turns. Each feckless angle of its affection or disaffection invariably leaves a disfiguring blemish that renders exquisite facets of character from alternating impacts of tragedy, disaster, triumph, and ecstasy. Steal a secret moment now and listen to your heart. It confides. Such twisted threads weave life’s strange tapestry. Of love, here find endless variations, and of lovers, nine.

In the limitless expanse of the cosmos, intelligence need not be confined to water-filled flesh. For every form of imagination, there is an embodiment of it out there in the void. On this world in this system, everything may be uniquely alive, from the rocks to the sandstorms. Journey here to die. Or be reborn.

During the summer of 1968, the Nightland, Incorporated carnival stopped in suburban Pecan Groves, Texas to stage a one-week show. Its performances paralleled a three-man prison escape, the miraculous resurrection of a cherished young boy, and the mysterious appearance of a young lady with a potent pedigree. If the squalor of its Freak Show and the rigged games of its midway are now known only within the faded archives of history, then contemporary society is its primary benefactor and direct ancestor. We see its shadows and hear its echoes everywhere.

He is the scourge of the night, every bachelorette's worst nightmare. He has already killed many single young ladies, and he will certainly kill again. Tonight, he lingers outside the house of his next intended victim. Watching. Waiting. Every matchmaker claims there is someone for everyone. This is what happens when like evils meet.