Showing results by author "Thomas Healy" in All Categories

For the kids of the Neighborhood Watch, the final weeks of middle school are interminable. In the fall they will get to attend the Hero Academy, studying to become Just Cause superheroes. Their plans get derailed when police officers gun down an unarmed black man. Annalisa, aka La Capitána, gets video of them trying to cover up the killing.

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.

Seventh-grade Superheroes! It's not easy being a 12-year-old superhero, but the five kids of the neighborhood watch are doing the best they can. La Capitána: 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.

Vanitha is the world's greatest parahuman hacker and can physically enter computer systems to control them from the inside. To relax, she's created a Hindu-themed multiplayer online role-playing game called The Path. When a mystery presents itself, she goes to investigate the strange new Malevolence. It kills her. She awakens inside the game as a new character, unable to use her parahuman powers to return to the real world. With no other options, she embarks upon a desperate quest to locate her body, a corpse run that may present her only chance to escape.

High school reporter Sherri "Bax" Baxter is content being an outsider, with a reputation as a nosy busybody among the students of Jericho High. Instead of friendships, she focuses on objective journalistic integrity, because it will get her out of the dead-end Texas oil town and into a prestigious journalism school, and she's pretty sure she's found her big story.

Times are tough in the economic downturn of the late 2040s. Angel, an ex-prostitute-turned-assassin, has just killed her ex-boyfriend without making a dime on it. Camaro, a courier, is wanted by the Feds for smuggling coffee and evading pursuit. And Haiwee, once the greatest hacker on the planet, has ruined her body with the drugs used to enhance her reflexes and is destitute with no reputation left to cash in upon. So when a billionaire offers them a big paycheck to retrieve one of three collectible bottles and destroy the other two, the three young mercenaries don't ask questions.

This collection includes both previously-published and all-new stories.

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.

A collection of eight tales ranging from horror to superhero, science fiction to post-apocalyptic, that examine the darker aspects of the world.

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. She is joined by Undead Elvis, who promises her that Graceland remains intact even though the rest of the world has become sand and ash. As Graceland is the only safe place left, Hope must undertake the perilous journey across a broken, unfamiliar landscape.

A weary Elven veteran finds himself banished to the far end of the world, and even then, still manages to find trouble.

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.

Mustang Sally has some speedy shoes to fill. This young superhero has waited her whole life to join Just Cause–the premiere team of American heroes. Now she’s hoping her super-speed will earn a spot on the same team to which her parents and grandparents belonged. A chance encounter with the villain who killed her father changes everything. Even though she’s only an intern, Sally devotes herself to finding the man known as Destroyer. With the help of her eagle-winged best friend Sondra and her super-strong love interest Jason, her investigations uncover a sinister plot.

July 13, 1977—The lives of four super-powered people become irrevocably intertwined when the lights go out in New York City, plunging their world into chaos. The superheroes of Just Cause, grown soft and complacent without any supervillains to challenge them, must overcome their personal demons as well as uphold the law in a lawless land of rioters, arson, and murder.

The would-be Archmage has slain nearly all the magic-users in the world, taking their power for himself. If he succeeds in killing the Lucky Seven’s own mage Stratocaster, the Archmage’s power will become absolute and plunge the world into darkness under his cruel reign. But not if Mustang Sally and the rest of the Just Cause superheroes have anything to say about it.

Step into the shadows where the line between flesh and nightmare blurs, where the body becomes both canvas and cage. In this chilling anthology, darkness reigns supreme as twisted minds explore the depths of human agony and transformation. From the grotesque to the surreal, each story delves deeper into the macabre, weaving tales of torment that will leave you breathless and disturbed.

Chef Muffin is no adventurer, but she's going to have to figure out how to become one. She's got to prepare a fantastic dish for a royal wedding, using ingredients she's never heard of, that she'll have to travel the breadth of the world to find. If she fails, she loses her livelihood, but if she succeeds...like every true fantasy adventurer...fame and fortune await. And, if she's lucky, she might even find true love into the bargain. It's a recipe for fun.