Showing results by author "Ian Thomas Healy" in All Categories

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.

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.

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.

It was supposed to be a simple job for The Ghost, a 300-year-old unkillable mercenary: Interrupt a prisoner transfer and deliver the prisoner to those footing the bill. Jingshen had done jobs like it thousands of times. But this time, it all goes wrong. He was supposed to deliver Zoe, a young woman with a devastating power. But after centuries of doing dirty work for money, he decides it's time to regain his lost humanity.

Humanity has spent decades calling into the stars, seeking assurances that we are not alone in the galaxy. After many years of silence, someone has answered. The Hind came from afar, not to extend the hand of friendship, but the axe of conquest. The Hind drop an impenetrable force field over New York City, creating a cage where their shock troops will battle a handful of superheroes. In their desperate bid to save first their city and then the rest of the world, the heroes of Just Cause must do the unthinkable and ally with the greatest supervillain the world has ever seen.

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.

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.

Airship Lies is a Steampunk/Western anthology containing five stories from the Age of Wonder, ranging from the Old West to the wilderness beyond the Frontier to the very edge of space itself.

When a talented new player joins the perennially-losing sub-minor-league hockey team, the Fighting Aardvarks, it marks the beginning of a winning tradition. But things aren't as they seem, and players begin to change. First line center Hammie learns the truth: the Aardvarks are becoming vampires, and it's up to him to stop them before the infestation spreads beyond just the team.

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

The target: A painting of Anjanae's deceased mother, stolen from her and presented for sale by a professional artist. The job: Steal it back and don't get caught, because high school is hard enough without facing hard time.

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.

Making the Cut is the flagship show on the FoodieTV network, giving recent high school graduates a chance to win a scholarship to a prestigious culinary school. With a $10,000 prize and that incredible scholarship at stake, can their friendship survive the rigors of reality television?

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.

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.

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.

Jackrabbit is stuck in a time loop, living the same day over and over again, and his only hope to free himself is to recover a mystical artifact called the Nick of Time. But first, he's got to survive long enough to find it against obstacles like a demonically possessed water heater, a vicious cat in a tree, and a team of supervillains headed by the dastardly Cheddarman.