Ian Thomas Healy

Seventh-grade Superheroes It's not easy being a twelve-year-old superhero, but the five kids of the Neighborhood Watch are doing the best they can. La Capit na: super-strong flier. Wheels: brilliant inventor. Hothead: catches on fire. Breezy: controls wind. Rascal: super-skateboarding. From their headquarters built into a repurposed Winnebago, they patrol the streets and alleys of their small hometown and dream of being Big Time Heroes like Mustang Sally and the rest of Just Cause. Instead, they're stuck rescuing cats stuck in trees . . . or they would be if their rivals didn't get there first. Three identical superpowered triplets, the Culture Club, are the darlings of local media. They never miss a photo opportunity or interview. They always seem to be in the right place at the right time. It just isn't fair. When La Capit na manages to stop a real supervillain, it changes everything for the Neighborhood Watch, and sets in motion a chain of events that will mean only one team can come out on top. Will the Culture Club win the day once more, or will the Neighborhood Watch prevail?

MAKE A DEAL WITH THE DEVILA few years ago, Mustang Sally had to make a deal with her worst enemy in the entire world: Destroyer, the man who killed her father. He agreed to use his technology to reverse a nanotech plague and save the world. His price? A favor, to be collected from Sally at some point in the future. GIVE THE DEVIL HIS DUEThe time has come for Sally to fulfill her obligation. Destroyer needs her to help him save the life of his sister, who has been trapped in a comatose state for nearly her entire life. Sally will have to enter the woman's Dream-world, with help from her teammate Minerva and Destroyer's nephew March. Once there, she must complete an epic journey through the woman's mind and find the key to unlock her consciousness and release her from her coma. She quickly discovers things that can harm her in the Dream-world have dire consequences in the real world, and Sally must swallow her pride to fight for a life precious to the man who stole a life precious to her.

LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG, LEAVE A GOOD-LOOKING CORPSE. Such is the credo of the modern mercenary in the economic downturn of the late 2040s. Three such antiheroes are brought together by a billionaire for a unique search-and-retrieval mission. If they succeed, they'll walk away free and clear with a big fat payday. But if they fail . . . well, things will go badly for them. Their quest will take them to the far corners of the Earth, from central Australia to Brazil to the Eastern European miconation of Borlovia, all in search of one of the world's rarest treasures: the elusive and collectible TIS bottle. Three bottles, three chances to succeed . . . or fail. What could possibly go wrong?

HOPE WAS PLAYING FIVE-CARD DRAW WITH UNDEAD ELVIS WHEN THE WORLD ENDED. Before the world ended, Hope was a down-and-out virgin stripper. Now she's pregnant with a baby prophesied to be the world's salvation. Undead Elvis promises her that Graceland is the only safe place left even though the rest of the world has become sand and ash. Hope must undertake the perilous journey across a broken, unfamiliar landscape to reach it. Although she finds precious few allies and friends on her path, the black moments never seem to stop and somehow, she must find the resolve she needs in order to birth her child and ultimately heal the world that seems far beyond redemption.

In the distant future, in our own galactic backyard... With the Confederation on the brink of war, the Watchtower organization struggles to maintain peace despite the ongoing threat of the Secessionists. A killer is picking off Watchmen one by one. Following the philosophy of "Set a thief to catch a thief," Watchman Wisconsin Lockerbie hires cyborg assassin Jersey Jackson to track down the killer. While embroiled in the criminal underworld, they uncover a plot to build a superweapon that will tilt the upcoming conflict in favor of the Secessionists. Lockerbie, Jackson, and a motley crew of misfit aliens must set aside their differences to save the Confederation.

Man. Lion. Warrior. Enigmatic superhero Lionheart was always cut from a different cloth than his teammates on Just Cause, so when he learns his old kung fu teacher, Master Chou, is dying, he doesn't hesitate to travel halfway around the world to pay his final respects to the man who saved his life and set him off upon his heroic journey. Upon arrival, he discovers his old master has been murdered, and quickly becomes embroiled in a battle for the honor of his master's Cherrywood School against one of the most dangerous heroin cartels in Hong Kong: the Five Deadly Serpents. His only allies are Master Chou's two children: Qiao, the seething warrior determined to avenge his father's death, and Lihua, the lovely and dangerous fighter who steals the lion's heart. They're outnumbered, outgunned, and the Five Deadly Serpents have numerous parahumans within their ranks. Lionheart, Qiao, and Lihua only have their training, their wits, and each other. Only time and blood will tell if the three warriors can save the Cherrywood School from the many-headed serpent of the Triad.

1907: A world of steam and steel, of brass and bravery. Spaceships ply the lanes above the Earth, running on coke furnaces and a prayer, while the atomic-powered Circumferential Rail runs the route between Paris, France, and Houston, Texas. Where there is cargo, and passengers of means, pirates soon follow, and this is how Jonathan Orbital, heir to the Circumferential Rail finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy surrounding a kidnapped French woman with a valuable secret. Enter the roguish space pirate Phinneas Greaves, who kidnaps the beautiful and intelligent Cecilie Renault off the Circumferential Rail in order to deliver her father's research to the highest bidder. The smitten Jonathan will stop at nothing to rescue her, but both men soon learn the global implications of the woman's knowledge, and they are forced to wage harrowing battles across the Big Black of space and the dusty landscapes of the American West, with the only certainty being that those who want to exploit this revolutionary technology will stop at nothing to acquire it. The Oilman's Daughter is a rollicking steampunk collaboration representing the best of authors Ian Thomas Healy (Just Cause Universe) and Allison M. Dickson (Strings, Colt Coltrane).

This collection includes both previously-published and all-new stories: THE MIGHTY PECULIAR INCIDENT AT MUDDY CREEK-What starts out as something simple as a train failing to stop winds up as something mighty peculiar indeed. CLOCKWORK CHLOE-Bert Tillory can get any woman to say yes, but who is he really looking for? POSSE-Sometimes when riding down a fugitive, it's hard to tell who's the hunter and who's being hunted. HANGING THE MAGICIAN-It's one thing to capture the most notorious horse thief in the West, but quite another to carry out his sentence. ALL IN-How high can the stakes truly get for a single hand of poker? SPRING LOADED-Love and revenge, clockwork-style. All this, plus an original cowboy poem and a preview of the novel PARIAH'S MOON

Once, John Irish was a legend in the porn industry, partying with the likes of John Holmes, Peter North, Nina Hartley, and Seka, but now he's on the far side of fifty, and Ron Jeremy won't even return his phone calls. Desperate for any kind of paying work, he's sunk to the level of bit roles in grade-Z porn and is even considering applying to work at Wal-Mart, when hot-blooded starlet Mindy Copperhead comes into his life. He quickly discovers she's far more than a simple blowjob artist, but is in fact an advance scout for a distant alien race, sent to Earth to find...him. Her race is embroiled in an interstellar war and losing badly. Her Queen became enamored with a movie in which John appeared, called Starfucker, and sent her scout to find him and bring him back to her, ostensibly to help her repopulate their dying planet. Thus John finds himself mixed up in a crazy, sexy adventure which makes even the most gonzo porn seem tame by comparison. In a civilization where skills can be learned via injections, danger lurks around every corner, and intrigue is as common as breakfast, John must get to the bottom of the mystery behind the war, as long as it doesn't kill him first, or at least break a hip." You'll have a really hard time selling this one."--J. A. Kazimer, author of Curses A F---ked-Up Fairy Tale"Really, Ian, I thought we raised you better than this."--E. Colcannon, the author's mother"I would whole-heartedly give this book my highest recommendation, if I weren't, in fact, dead."--The Spirit of Douglas Adams, contacted via seance, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"How did you get this number? Stop calling me I sold it all to Disney already "--George Lucas

As a new president takes the White House, Just Cause returns to New York City for the first time in eight years, under the command of its newest leader: Mustang Sally. But not everyone is excited about the expansion of Just Cause. Senator Christine Goodwin, slighted by the team's leadership years before, has made it her mission to put all parahumans on a very short leash, while at the same time creating her own super-powered militia. With the media and America at large turning against Just Cause, Sally and her teammates must risk their lives and freedom to halt the Senator's plans, which threaten the futures of parahuman people worldwide.

I WILL SHOW YOU FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST. T. S. EliotWhen Just Cause hero Orb is murdered using a new kind of nanotechnology, Mustang Sally will stop at nothing to find and bring to justice his killer. Not even her longtime mentor Juice's dismissal from his position as team leader can distract Sally from her mission. A sensational new parahuman named Champion brings old-fashioned morals back to the world, training others to follow in his footsteps and heralding the onset of a new age of heroism. Champion isn't all that he seems, and there is a sinister side to his organization. To find Orb's killer and uncover the motive for his murder, Sally must risk everything that makes her a hero. Champion is the sixth novel in the popular Just Cause Universe superhero fiction series.

Jay is having a pretty bad day at school. His popular cheerleader girlfriend just dumped him and a jock spilled soda all over his brand new Nikes. So when the God of Rabbits recruits him to save the world from an invasion of interstellar cockroaches, it seems like it might be a pretty cool gig. Unfortunately, in the spectrum of god-like abilities, rabbits rank pretty low, and Jay receives the ability to make snarky wisecracks, jump real high, and . . . that's about all. With all other superheroes snapped up by the Cockroach God and his minions running rampant in the extradimensional Gods' Home, Jay and his newfound ally Bluebird are the only two unlikely heroes left to defend humanity. We are doomed . . .

When criminals are convicted, they go to jail. When they have parahuman abilities, they go to Deep Six, the most secure prison facility in the world. Six thousand feet underground, nobody has ever escaped from the maximum security facility. Until now. A parahuman terrorist called Misrule engineers a mass breakout, and it falls to a pair of prison guards to stop the world's most dangerous criminals from reaching freedom, and Just Cause won't be able to help them. Despite being overmatched and underpowered, the two guards must find a way to prevent the escapees from their ultimate goal.