Who wants to be a superhero? Hope did, but she grew out of it. Which made her superhuman breakthrough in the Ashland Bombing, just before starting her freshman year at the University of Chicago, more than a little ironic. And now she has some decisions to make. Given the code-name "Astra" and invited to join the Sentinels, Chicago's premier super-team, will she take up the cape and mask and become a career superhero? Or will she get a handle on her new powers (superstrength has some serious drawbacks) and then get on with her life plan?

While superheroes rule the skies battling outlandish supervillains, Geist fights street-level scum under the cover of night. His rule for the worst of the worst criminals is simple. Two strikes and you're out. One night on a regular patrol, Geist receives an offer from one of his chief rivals on the San Miguel Police. Will he accept the offer in good faith or is the Midnight Son walking into a possible trap?

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot.

Ten years ago, Amelia woke up alone and lost in a broken world where she had to fight for her survival. Now, after reaching the pinnacle of power, defeating the Void itself, and escaping the abyss, she has finally found her way back into the real world. But instead of returning to Earth, she arrives in the land of Vacuos. A fantasy world with magic, monsters, Classes, and Levels. A world that is governed by a System like it were a video game.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

"How dare you? I never asked for you to hunt me down!" No, Velma Martinez hadn't. But when you had once been Velveteen, child super-heroine and one of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, you were never going to be free, even if your only power was to bring toys to life. The Marketing Department would be sure of that.

Fight, survive, adapt, and rely only on yourself. That is Derek’s creed and what's got him through the System Integration on Earth. Everything changed when the System came. Cute bunnies and beautiful butterflies became savage killing machines. Then the Invaders arrived with a single goal: to obtain ownership of this new habitable planet. War has raged ever since. None of this mattered much to Derek, aside from making living a little more perilous.

On July 6, 1963, human history was forever altered. From the depths of space, a golden wave of light bathed everyone on Earth in rays that rendered them unconscious. Six days later, five billion people awakened with superpowers. For thirty-seven years now, superhumanity has managed to keep the peace. With some exceptions....

Catherine "Cat" Leblanc is an orphan that is about as far from super-rich as one can be. When the Incursion alarms start blaring and the sky starts raining hungry xenos, it's just another blemish on an already piss-poor afternoon.

Humanity stands at the brink of extinction. Earth has been bombarded by forces beyond our understanding. In the aftermath, monsters roam the Earth while humanity is forced into a few small safe zones, but not all is lost. When the shadows fell, so too did hope. Progentitor rays birthed a new breed of humans, known as supers. Now those few are all that stands between mankind and death upon the claws and fangs of monsters.

Amelia Lockheart can't walk, but she can fly. As the armored superhero - Arsenal, she has the power of a small army at her disposal. Fourteen years ago her parents disappeared after a horrific wreck which left her wheelchair bound. With thieves salivating to steal her armor, and supervillains trying to kill her, Amelia must learn to trust her new team if she wants to survive long enough to learn the truth.

Alana wasn’t always a child of the Kingdom of Bergond. In fact, she hails from an entirely different world. But an accident on Earth left her dead, and she was reincarnated as the daughter of a farmer and his wife in the hamlet of Orsken. Now, she’s learning how to live in a land vastly unlike that which she came from—and how to wield the new powers she possesses. For, even by the rules of her strange new home, Alana is special: a young bard capable of mending wounds, counteracting poisons, and healing the sick, all through the use of mana and her own mind.

A former villain is living a quiet life, hidden among the masses. Miles has one big secret: He might just be the most powerful super in existence. Those days are behind him. But when a wounded young lady unable to control her superpower needs his help, she shatters his boring life, pulling him into the one place he least expected to be—the Bureau of Superheroes.

Nature is dying. Perhaps before the world is turned into an industrious machine, nature itself can play one final trump card to save itself. Summoned to a new world, a mushroom-loving mycologist needs to grow up and grow stronger in order to accomplish the goal that brought them to this new place: to save nature from the system that the sentient races have created. Stats, levels, classes, and skills are all well and good, but when you're a Child of Poverty in the slums of City Nineteen, there's little you can do to change the world. Not unless you're willing to think outside the box!

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and 10-year-old Avery Dixon.

After serving two years in a federal prison, Karen Hashimoto is out on parole and eager to put her criminal past behind her. No easy task, since she's also the former supervillain known as Crushette. A chance encounter leads to an unexpected opportunity, and she is recruited as the newest member of the city's premier team of superheroes: The Good Guys.

When collegiate baseball phenom Chase Fulton suffers a freak injury on the field that shatters his dreams of becoming a Major League catcher, his future looks bleak until he’s recruited into quasi-governmental covert operations, where his training as an assassin and covert intelligence operative launches him into a world fraught with danger, intrigue, and unexpected passion.

Tess McBray was dying. The solstice syndrome had no cure, and she resigned herself to an early grave. But just when she gave up on survival, all her symptoms mysteriously disappeared. All but one symptom, anyway. Something is wrong with Tess’ hands. They absorb any material they touch, and her skin turns to wood, steel, or concrete. It doesn’t take this comic book obsessed 21-year-old long to figure out what’s going on: somehow, she’s developed super powers. And she’s not the only one; across the country, people are coming forward and sharing their gifts with the world.

Koji Owens is the new kid...again. As the only son of an Air Force F-16 pilot, he's learned to adapt and survive every time they move. It's not easy starting over with new friends and schools every two years, but when the Owens family makes their final move to New York, Koji finally has hope for a normal high school life - that is, until he finds a strange bracelet in his locker.

In a world invaded by demons, it's up to Katie and her Killers to restore order while also evading enemies - and friends - who want her in the worst way.

Kane Andrews is just another one of the billions of people on Earth who watch as Richter, the world's first superhuman, goes on a rampage. All the world's military cannot stop him, no matter what they throw his way. Until, with the whole world watching, Kane surprises himself by flying up to catch someone the supervillain has thrown off a building. With no idea of the extent or magnitude of his powers, Kane has a long way to go before becoming the first superhero.

As a medical examiner, Samantha Owens knows her job is to make a certain sense of death with crisp methodology and precision instruments. But the day the Tennessee floods took her husband and children, the light vanished from Sam’s life. She has been pulled into a suffocating grief no amount of workaholic ardor can penetrate - until she receives a peculiar call from Washington, D.C. On the other end of the line is an old boyfriend’s mother, asking Sam to do a second autopsy on her son.

Fireball blasting battle-mages, shapeshifting soccer moms, and a best friend who is more than happy to throw punches now and ask questions later-Wyatt Murphy is in for a supernatural thrill ride of reality-bending proportions.

After a botched escape plan from her boarding school, Abigail is stunned to discover the school is actually a cover for an elite spy ring called The Center, along with being training grounds for future spies. Even more shocking? Abigail's mother is a top agent for The Center and she has gone MIA, with valuable information that many people would like to have - at any cost. Along with a former nemesis and charming boy from her grade, Abigail goes through a crash course in Spy Training 101, often with hilarious - and sometimes painful - results.

Modern gods and goddesses, remote, revered - and like the pantheon of heroes and heroines of ancient myth - possessing great power tempered with flaws. Now, find within this anthology great tales by gifted and award-winning authors who move superheroes from the four-color panels of comic books to the fantastic pages of fiction, stories that will remind anyone who ever wanted to wear a cape or don a cowl of the extraordinary powers of the imagination!

When the crows gather over a remote Navajo Reservation in the deep Southwest, it is a sign that the thin veil that separates our world from the one beyond is about to open. Without a barrier between life and death, things pass between both worlds. Some of them are good. Most of them are not.

Doctor Impossible, evil genius and diabolical scientist, has tried to take over the world in every way imaginable, but this time is going to be different. He'll have to contend with Fatale, however, a rookie superhero on her first day with the Champions, the world's most famous superteam. She's a patchwork woman of skin and chrome, a gleaming technological marvel built for the next generation of warfare.

Natasha Romanoff is one of the world's most lethal assassins. Trained from a young age in the arts of death and deception, Natasha was given the title of Black Widow by Ivan Somodorov, her brutal teacher at the Red Room, Moscow's infamous academy for operatives.

Ramon “Ray” Cosa’s life is not what he expected it to be. Living in a small Texas town ravaged by Hurricane Harvey, Ray has suffered many losses in his young life, and he has little hope left that anything will ever change or get better. That is, until the vintage Ford Galaxie and its strange, dying owner enters Ray’s life. Given a jeweled ring he cannot remove and a desperate mission, Ray is plunged into a universe of secrets, wonders, and terrors he never dreamed exists. Now, he travels the Queen's Road - a hyper-space highway that connects all the planets in creation.

Dear Diary...Bess, George, and I are actually in Alaska! Everywhere you look, there are massive mountains and sparkling, deep-blue waters. We're on the maiden voyage of the Arctic Star luxury cruise ship, and my old friend, Becca Wright, the assistant cruise director, needs our help. She received threatening emails before even setting sail; then a bloody body turned up in the swimming pool.

Who wants to be a superhero? Hope did, but she grew out of it. Which made her superhuman breakthrough in the Ashland Bombing, just before starting her freshman year at the University of Chicago, more than a little ironic. And now she has some decisions to make. Given the code-name "Astra" and invited to join the Sentinels, Chicago's premier super-team, will she take up the cape and mask and become a career superhero? Or will she get a handle on her new powers (superstrength has some serious drawbacks) and then get on with her life plan?

Kingston James Parks' day starts off badly enough when he arrives at work to find the FBI has raided his place of employment. It gets worse when the Green Zombie Soldiers (really) start shooting at him, and becomes downright surreal when getting shot at triggers his breakthrough, and he teleports to safety. He's become a superhuman, a "jumper."

It's been a decade since the first ultra-enhanced human beings were forced to abandon covert military operations. Advancing public technology and new government legislation made continuing to operate in secrecy untenable, and so they mainstreamed, becoming the world's first superhero group - the Order of Champions. They are the ten mightiest individuals on the planet - beloved by the masses and feared by their enemies. And their world is falling apart. The superheroes have become complacent - secure in their own sense of invincibility. They are arrogant and alone and increasingly rocked by ...

Former Marine Captain Alexander Hale only wanted a weekend out with some old buddies. He could have done without the gang war, the shootout, and...oh yeah, the alien abduction. Now he's in the middle of something he doesn't understand, never asked for, and is having quite possibly the greatest time of his life. Semper Fi and which way are the shores of Tripoli anyway?

Amelia Lockheart can't walk, but she can fly. As the armored superhero - Arsenal, she has the power of a small army at her disposal. Fourteen years ago her parents disappeared after a horrific wreck which left her wheelchair bound. With thieves salivating to steal her armor, and supervillains trying to kill her, Amelia must learn to trust her new team if she wants to survive long enough to learn the truth.