Harvey Stanbrough: 216 books

Jonathan Kirski is tasked with the job of mining bones from the Siberian death fields. It shouldn't be a problem. After all, it's just ore, from which will be derived a calcium extract. But Jonathan's past says otherwise.  

This is a political spoof. A career politician gives an inspiring campaign speech, sort of, and has the audience eating out of her hand, until something wholly unexpected but richly deserved happens.  

This is a psychological fantasy short story. What if an elderly woman gets it in her head that fish really is brain food? And what if she decides if a little of something is good, a lot more would be better?

What are the consequences of a fight gone wrong? As you're queued up in line waiting for your pay, you have time to consider that.  The other guy's still lying on the floor.Nobody seems to notice. Even the boss. Finally, when the others are paid and gone and it's just you and the boss, you understand.

What happens when two writers head out for a camping trip in the Gila River Lower Box wilderness? Well, they have to eat. But neither of them eats alone. Each has a full array of characters from which to draw when necessary. Come along and see what happens when these two stop in at the El Charro Café for a bite of breakfast.  

There's something about the old Jenkins place, but what's the allure? Is it the dead body in a living house? Or is it the chance to live forever?

In this intense short story, the narrator relates a story to his friend about being kidnapped by another mobster. A strange and ironic look at those who live and die by treachery.

This is a novel, but only in the most basic sense. Actually it's a novel wrapped around eleven separate short stories. Or maybe it's a short story collection enclosed in a novel. The novel itself consists of a prologue and several intermissions, one after all the short stories except the last...

Harold Cranston, 87 years old minus 1 day, is packing at his wife's direction for a trip to see their son in Colorado. He works in the Mustang Mountain tracking station. Helen and Harold live outside of Huntsville, Alabama, the home of Redstone Arsenal. Like the epigram says, When the missiles are...

Traveling a vast distance over an incalculable number of years, a massive cloud of microbes enters the solar system. The collective speeds inexorably toward Earth. In the early morning hours of a May 20, 2108, it slaps into the Pacific Ocean several miles off the California coast. And billions upon...

Some cases are better than others, not so rattling. Not so sleep-depriving. Not so insane. But the evidence in a brand new missing persons case echoes the evidence in a three year old cold case that ended with a missing body. Now it's time to figure things out and close them both. How...

A man can be nice to a woman without any thought of having sex with her, right? And vice versa? That's Pamela's theory, but will it hold in the presence of a tall, nice, very handsome man? On the night before the finality of her wedding?

Attend a writers' conference and meet an unbearable woman; move out in the woods with a couple good ol' boys to talk about what happens at the moment of death; meet a hard-luck woman who gets mixed up with the mob; witness a miniature mosquito-like creature; drop deep into the swamps to meet Granny...

Three of these five stories feature Charlie Task. Ever wonder what goes into making a psychopath? Find out in "The Odd Task." Ever wonder what it might be like to sit down in a psychopath's home and interview him? Check out "A View to the Curious." In "A False Sense of Finality,"...