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They're Earth's mightiest superteam - and dysfunctional as hell.

OMNIPOTENT MAN - a body with the density of steel, and a brain to match

THE FLYING SQUIRREL - aging playboy industrialist by day, avenging krypto-fascist by night

IRON LASS - mythology's greatest warrior - but the world might be safer if she had a husband

X-MAN - formerly of the League of Angry Blackmen... but not formerly enough

THE BROTHERFLY - radioactively fly

POWER GRRRL - perpetually deciding between fighting crime or promoting her latest album, clothing line, or sex scandal

Having finally defeated all archenemies, the members of the Fantastic Order of Justice are reduced to engaging in toxic office politics that could very well lead to a superpowered civil war. Only one woman can save them from themselves: Dr. Eva Brain-Silverman, aka Dr. Brain, the world's leading therapist for the extraordinarily abled.

Hamza and Yehat are The Coyote Kings best friends, one a disgruntled dishwasher and the other a video store clerk, but each brilliant in his own right. Yehat builds prototypes of space-age inventions in his spare time, while Hamza, a former English honors student who was kicked out of the university, writes lush, lyrical poems when he's not blockedwhich, these days, is nearly always.

When the gorgeous, mysterious Sherem shows up in E-Town decked out in desert finery, Hamza's creative spark is ignited. Who is this sophisticated woman that speaks arcane African tongues, quotes from obscure comics and Star Wars movies, yet seems somehow too ethereal for the world Hamza inhabits? And what is the lost artifact that she and a cast of coiffed collectors and criminal cultists so desperately seek? As Hamza falls blindly in love with Sherem, little does he know that he and Yehat play the biggest part of all in the recovery of the ancient relic and in the future of all living beings....

Andrew Birch is a Company Man - a spy, a soldier, a saboteur... a corporate terrorist by any other name. He is one of the top operatives for Astradyne, one of the giant corporations that now rule the irradiated world he lives in. Among his peers, his ruthless efficiency and his love for the company are legendary. Then, on a routine mission, a chance encounter puts an all-too-human face on the consequences of corporate rule. As Birch begins to question the world he has helped build, corporate war breaks out - and he now finds himself a pawn in a game that goes deeper than he ever imagined. And Birch begins to wonder if perhaps he has put his faith in the wrong thing...

The management buy-out of Hell wasn't going quite as well as had been hoped. For a start, there had been that nasty business with the perjurors, and then came the news that the Most Wanted Man in History had escaped, and all just as the plans for the new theme park, EuroBosch, were underway.

Would you ever enter into a pact with the Devil to sell your soul and body in return for becoming a great musical genius like Beethoven?

Aspiring musical composer Leverkühn's extraordinary intellect and creativity as a young man mark him as destined for success, but his ambition is for true greatness. He strikes a Faustian bargain for creative genius: he intentionally contracts syphilis, which deepens his artistic inspiration through madness. He is subsequently visited by a Mephistophelean being (who says, in effect, "that you can only see me because you are mad, does not mean that I do not really exist"), and, renouncing love, bargains his soul in exchange for twenty-four years of creative genius. His madness - his daemonic inspiration - leads to extraordinary musical brilliance but he feels the progress of his neuro-syphilitic madness leading towards complete breakdown. Leverkühn's life unfolds in the context of, and in parallel with, the German cultural and political environment which led to the rise and downfall of Nazi Germany.

One of the most durable myths in Western culture, the story of Faust tells of a learned German doctor who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. Early enactments of Faust's damnation were often the raffish fare of clowns and low comedians. But the young Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) recognized in the story of Faust's temptation and fall the elements of tragedy.

In his epic treatment of the Faust legend, Marlowe retains much of the rich phantasmagoria of its origins. There are florid visions of an enraged Lucifer, dueling angels, the Seven Deadly Sins, Faustus tormenting the Pope, and his summoning of the spirit of Alexander the Great. But the playwright created equally powerful scenes that invest the work with tragic dignity, among them the doomed man's calling upon Christ to save him and his ultimate rejection of salvation for the embrace of Helen of Troy.

With immense poetic skill, and psychological insight that foreshadowed the later work of Shakespeare and the Jacobean playwrights, Marlowe created in Dr. Faustus one of the first true tragedies in English. Vividly dramatic, rich in poetic grandeur, this classic play remains a robust and lively exemplar of the glories of Elizabethan drama.

Jack Faust is a breathtaking and masterful new spin on Goethe's story of a scholar who sells his soul to the Devil for the gift of unlimited knowledge.

But unlike the classic Mephistopheles, the seductive demon who approaches Swanwick's Johannes Faust is not the devil as we know him, but rather a representative of a mysterious race that seeks nothing less than the extermination of the hated human animal. And the wisdom this creature offers the disenchanted thinker goes far beyond anything known or imagined in Goethe's day: the secrets of flight and the cosmos, the principles of economics and engineering, the mysteries of medicine and the atom.

And so begins Faust's transition from madman to savior -- from Johannes to Jack -- as he accelerates human progress at blinding speed, setting the mighty gears and pistons of industry in motion to first remake Germany, and then all Europe, in his own image. Ushering in a New Age of Mechanization hundreds of years before its rightful time, he is alternately adored and despised for his accomplishments, as he attempts to elevate humankind from the muck of ignorance, superstition and disease.

Yet it is love that damns Jack Faust and, ultimately, humanity as well. For Mephistopheles has revealed to him the beauty and purity of innocence in the person of Margarete Reinhardt, the daughter of a struggling businessman. To win her heart, Faust will give Margarete power and influence in an age when women are powerless -- and fame in a time when notoriety can be fatal -- and, in the process, blind his beloved, and himself, to the horrors Faust's "progress" has wrought. For brutality and greed will always pervert love and genius in a degenerate world -- a world which now, thanks to Jack Faust, is rapidly sliding into chaos... or something far worse.

From internationally acclaimed author Minister Faust, increasingly described as one of the best writers of his generation, comes a searing new novel fusing modern realities with ancient yearning, struggle and triumph.

The Alchemists of Kush is the story of two Sudanese "lost boys." Both lost fathers to civil war and mothers along the path of escape. Both boys were hunted and fell into violence to survive. Both came under the guardianship of mystic madmen who promised to transform them. And both vowed to become leaders who would transform their worlds, or die trying.

One of those lost boys is Raphael Garang, known to the streets of E-Town as the Supreme Raptor.

The other lost boy was Hru-sa-Usir, who lived 7,000 years ago in the Savage Lands of the Lower Nile, and known to the Greeks as Horus, son of Osiris.

Nobody knows the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas like Daniel Faust, a sorcerer for hire and ex-gangster who uses black magic and bullets to solve his clients' problems. When an old man comes seeking vengeance for his murdered granddaughter, what looks like a simple job quickly spirals out of control.

Soon Daniel stands in the crossfire between a murderous porn director; a corrupt cop with a quick trigger finger; and his own former employer, a racket boss who isn't entirely human. Then there's Caitlin: brilliant, beautiful, and the lethal right hand of a demon prince.

A man named Faust should know what happens when you rub shoulders with demons. Still Daniel can't resist being drawn to Caitlin's flame as they race to unlock the secret of the Etruscan Box, a relic that people all over town are dying -- and killing -- to get their hands on. As the bodies drop and the double-crosses pile up, Daniel will need every shred of his wits, courage and sheer ruthlessness just to survive.

Daniel Faust knew he was standing with one foot over the brink of hell. He's about to find out just how far he can fall.

Daniel Faust, Las Vegas sorcerer and career criminal, has never pulled the trigger on an innocent man. When the infernal Prince Sitri challenges him to do just that, though, he can't walk away. His lover, Caitlin, is Sitri's right hand... and if Daniel refuses the job, he'll never see her again.

While Daniel works to unravel Sitri's twisted game, putting his principles and his life on the line, Caitlin has problems of her own. A pack of renegade halfbloods are in town, armed to the teeth and aiming to go to war with hell itself. Their leader is a bad memory from Caitlin's past, one she thought dead and buried centuries ago, and he's got revenge on his mind.

As if that isn't bad enough, the fallout from Daniel's last job descends in the form of an FBI task force, aimed at putting him and everyone he cares about behind bars. The feds have a magician of their own, one who knows all of Daniel's dirty little secrets. Throw in a mythical road map to hell and the ghost of a 15th-century serial killer, and the stage is set for a deadly collision.

Sitri's games are never what they seem. Everything is connected. If Daniel and Caitlin can't solve the puzzle in time, the consequences will tear them apart forever.

As the FBI closes in on the Las Vegas underworld, Daniel Faust -- grifter, thief, and sorcerer -- isn't the only one feeling the heat. Half-demon racket boss Nicky Agnelli is fighting to hang onto his empire, leaving a trail of dead informants in his wake, while Daniel's ex-girlfriend Jennifer rallies her forces on the street and aims her sights at Nicky's crown.

Meanwhile, homeless people are vanishing by the dozens. Daniel has bigger problems to worry about, but a plea from an old friend sends him on a search for answers. What he finds is a conspiracy twenty years in the making, involving a power-hungry senator, occult experiments, murderous British mercenaries... and Lauren Carmichael, Daniel's nemesis.

From a gunfight in the Arizona badlands to unearthing buried secrets in a New York laboratory, the hunt is on. With Lauren's deadly plan revealed and time running out, Daniel and his crew will stop at nothing to take her down. She's got the law in her pocket and a hired army at her back. He's got black magic, bullets, and the art of the con. It's high noon in Vegas and when the dust settles, only one side will be left standing.

May the best villain win.

It's hard to make a dishonest buck in Sin City, especially when a rogue FBI agent is gunning for your head. Flat broke and one step ahead of the law, Daniel Faust flees Vegas and lands in Chicago, where a risky heist promises to fill his pockets with cash.

There are the risks you can account for, and then there are the risks you never see coming, the ones that leave you blindsided and fighting to survive. Daniel is a stranger in a strange land, out of his element and surrounded by corrupt sorcerers, demons, and worse. Still, with a friend's soul hanging in the balance -- not to mention a pile of stolen cash -- giving up isn't an option.

Before he's done, Daniel will descend into the depths of Chicago's occult netherworld, competing in an underground poker tournament where the winner takes all... and with the infernal Court of Night-Blooming Flowers running the show, "winner takes all" has an entirely new meaning. The Flowers haven't forgotten Daniel's past insults, and if they get their way, he'll never leave the Windy City alive.

Nobody has ever escaped from the Iceberg. It's a privately-owned prison deep in the Mojave Desert, staffed by brutal guards and surrounded by desolate wasteland. Inside the walls, gangs and predators are constant threats; outside the walls, there's nothing but a sniper's bullet or a slow death in the desert heat.

Framed for murder and snared in a deadly curse, Daniel Faust lands behind bars with a target on his back. Worse, with Faust out of the picture, the Chicago mob is making its bid for control of Las Vegas. If he can't engineer his escape in time to stop them, none of his friends are safe. Then there's the matter of the warden's dark secret, the one that's filling up the prison morgue with body bags.

Faust has been caged, buried, cut off from his allies and his magic. His enemies think they've won. They're about to learn, the hard way, that this is one sorcerer who always has a trick up his sleeve.

Nobody has ever escaped from the Iceberg. But the Iceberg has never had a prisoner like Daniel Faust.

Out of prison and back on the streets, Daniel Faust returns home to a city on fire. The Chicago mob is making their play for control of Las Vegas, with an army of gunmen and a lethal shapeshifter on their side, while Daniel's friend Jennifer marshals the forces of the Vegas underworld. Staying on the sidelines isn't an option, especially when a Metro detective orders him to get the war under control -- and if he can't, he'll expose Daniel's secrets to the FBI.

Daniel Faust -- sorcerer, thief, and newly-minted Las Vegas crime boss -- has debts to pay. One of those debts has just come due, an IOU to be paid in the form of a high-risk heist, and it's a job he can't refuse. The mark? Daniel's arch-nemesis, a man with a Cheshire smile and the powers of a living god. The score? A sacrificial dagger buried under layers of electronic, occult, and human security, snug on the far side of a custom-built deathtrap.

Normally, a heist like that would be the end of Daniel's problems. This time, it's only the beginning.

Caitlin, Daniel's lover and the right hand of a demon prince, faces her own threat. She's adept at navigating the politics of Hell, keeping the peace with diplomatic grace and a whip, but a plan years in the making has left a ticking time bomb under her feet. When it explodes, it will send shockwaves through the infernal courts -- and expose one of Caitlin's darkest secrets. A hidden enemy has targeted Caitlin and Daniel for destruction, and aims to lure them into an impossible snare. For one of them to escape, the other must die.

The only way out is through a maze of demonic bounty hunters, psychic assassins, unlikely enemies and even more unlikely allies. Daniel Faust has spent his life as a trickster, defeating his enemies with the art of the con. He may have finally met his match. Las Vegas is the ultimate chessboard, and his opponent is already two moves ahead.

Daniel Faust has clawed his way from the gutter to a penthouse suite, carving a bloody swath across the Las Vegas underworld. He's buried his enemies and more than a few friends along the way. If there's one thing a modern-day sorcerer knows for certain, though, it's that the past never stays buried forever.

Now he's running on ice, juggling his responsibilities as a mob boss with his dubious "gift" of a knighthood in the courts of hell, defending territory in two worlds at once. It's a bad time for unfinished business to come back and haunt him, forcing him to confront his tortured history and the family he left behind. An even worse time for his surviving foes to join forces and take deadly aim at Faust's throne.

Toss in a syndicate operative from a parallel world, a deranged half-demon assassin hungry for a duel, and the shadowy machinations of the King of Worms, and the stage is set for a showdown under the neon lights of Vegas. Vultures are circling, and only the magician with the quickest wits -- and the fastest trigger-finger -- will survive.

The first story ever told left a scar on the skin of the universe, with its characters doomed to an endless cycle of reincarnation and death. Trapped by his enemies, Daniel Faust -- magician, mobster, and newly-minted knight of hell -- has been cast in the role of the eternal Thief. Now the story is dead-set on writing his final chapter, the one that ends with a knife in his back.

The curse can't be broken without tracking down the original Thief. The truth is buried beneath the legacy of a long-dead stage magician and a cache of occult relics from the 1940s, but Daniel and his crew aren't the only hunters on this trail: so is a deadly new contender who blends sorcery with science, armed with a link to Daniel's past -- and a cult he thought he had destroyed long ago.

The doomsday clock is ticking, and more than Daniel's own life is at stake. To save the day he'll have to pull off the most daring heist of his criminal career, stealing a priceless treasure from a reality-bending madman, or die trying.

Daniel Faust's last heist ended with a betrayal, a bullet in his heart, and a plunge from a lonely back-country bridge. Now he's on life support, and the occult relic keeping him tethered to this world is counting down the last seconds to midnight.

That's the good news. The bad news is, he just woke up in hell.

Marooned, lost, and hunted in an endless city of the damned, Daniel is racing against time. If he can't make it back to his body before the clock runs out, he'll be trapped in the netherworld forever. A host of enemies stand in his way. Some are desperate to silence him. Others, ghosts etched in blood and gun-smoke, are hungry for payback. Hell is the one place where you can never outrun your past.

And in the land of the living, Daniel's family and crew gather to mount a desperate defense around his hospital bed as assassins close in from all sides. Survival will take a miracle, but this magician might have one last trick up his sleeve.

A stunning new collection of fiction inspired by the fantastic world of manga--and featuring artwork by the best in the business, including

"Outerholic," by NISIOISIN (illustrated by CLAMP): CLAMP fans everywhere will appreciate the original art in this tale excerpted from NISIOISIN's upcoming novel--set in the world of CLAMP's bestselling xxxHOLiC--about a woman compelled to choose disaster.

"F-sensei's Pocket," by Otsuichi (illustrated by Takeshi Obata): What would youdo if you could make all your dreams come true? Here's the story of a girl who is really very ordinary--until a bunch of magic gadgets suddenly blow onto her porch.

"Outlandos d'Amour," by Kouhei Kadono (illustrated by Ueda Hajime): For a boy who can make lightning strike, the only thing harder than learning how to control his powers is falling in love.

"The Garden of Sinners," by Kinoko Nasu (illustrated by Takashi Takeuchi [TYPE-MOON]): Too many young girls are flying and dying. It has to stop--and only Shiki can put an end to it.

"Drill Hole in My Brain," (Written and illustrated by Otaro Maijo): The ill-fated love story of a boy with a hole in his head and a girl with a horn on hers. It was great while it lasted, but the end of their affair just might mean the end of the world.

PLUS more illustrated stories, columns, interviews, and bonus features!

A brilliant anthology featuring manga-inspired fiction from today's best writers with artwork from top manga creators, including

"ECCO," by Tatsuhiko Takimoto (illustrated by D.K): Is life nothing but a cruel joke? One young rebel decides to find out.

"Jagdtiger," by Kouhei Kadono (illustrated by Ueda Hajime): She's a combat-ready synthetic human with a dangerous flaw: a heart.

"Where the Wind Blows," by Otsuichi (illustrated by Takeshi Obata): A newspaper from the future carries a very disturbing story for one particular woman: She will die by the hand of the man she loves.

"Magical Girl Risuka," by NISIOISIN (illustrated by Kinu Nishimura): She's a beautiful witch with magical powers that could change the world. And he's the boy who will give her a reason to do it.

"Gray-Colored Diet Coke" by Yûya Satô: He's nineteen, surrounded by morons, and desperate to escape his crummy part-time job. His best friend's plan worked great, but surely suicide can't be the only way out.

In 1971 university students Walter Bishop and William Bell use an exotic chemical compound to link their subconscious minds. Unexpectedly, they open a rip in space through which comes a menace unlike any our world has ever seen - the Zodiac Killer. His singular goal is death, and it falls to Bishop, Bell, and Nina Sharp to stop him.

As a child, Olivia Dunham is "Subject 13," exposed to the experimental drug Cortexiphan. The effects it has upon her manifest when her stepfather assaults her mother--with dire consequences. All of her life, Olivia hides the strange things Cortexiphan has done to her. But when faced with a life-or-death situation, she can no longer deny her true nature. For if she does, someone close to her will die.

In 2008, Peter Bishop is estranged from his father and running shady operations in Southeast Asia. His latest scam lands him in a life-or-death situation involving weird events beyond the ken of modern science. On the run, he finds himself pursued by strange specters of his past... and his future.

The last Millennial contest--between the forces of Good and Evil for control of the universe--didn't work out quite so well for Evil and its rooters. But it's time for the next round, and this time the demon Mephistopheles is carrying the ball for the forces of Darkness. But all is not as it seems. The harried archdemon mistakenly signs up a medieval cutpurse names Mack the Club, thinking him the learned Dr. Faust. The demon Azzie, still stinging from the Evil's last defeat (and not being chosen to head the current effort), takes events into his own claws. And the pious angel Michael--well, let's just say some of his tactics in the titanic struggle to come are not quite cricket.

A truck full of illegal Mexican immigrants slaughtered with supernatural force is found by the side of a road. Trying to find answers, Sam and Dean are plunged into the dangerous world that exists along the Mexican border.

They encounter a tattooed, pistol-packing bandita on a motorcycle who seems be everywhere they go before they get there. Xochi Cazadora draws them into a whole new world of monsters...

An anthropologist travels to the central Australian desert to search for the source of an aboriginal myth; he suspects the terrible "Rainbow Serpent" is connected to the sacred Uluru rock formations. The holographic "Gate" he discovers with his nephew explains not just the origin of a legend, but the origin of man, and the true fate of the dinosaurs.

Maggie Roche is an out-of-work poet and single mother. Spied on by a cyborged rat, attacked, drugged into panic and rapture, seduced, drawn into conspiracy, she's flung four thousand years into her own future. In the alien world of the Ull- Upload Lifeform Lords who are human-machine hybrids of overwhelming power-she learns that she is history's first true time traveler, hunted by friend and foe to the end of time. The entire future of the cosmos will be reset by these terrifying events. The Judas Mandala introduced the terms "virtual reality" and "virtual matrix," anticipating Frank Tipler's influential Omega Point Theory, William Gibson's cyberpunk fiction, and The Matrix...

Xaraf Firebridge tumbled a million years into the future - to find earth ruled by beings who could play with the fabric of space and time as if they were gods. Yet somewhere in the distant past, something they had done went terribly wrong...

Now in the shadow of Earth's dying sun, Xaraf is sent forth on a perilous quest to preserve the course of history. Accompanied by the wondrous sword Alamogordo and the woman warrior Glade, he seeks the Legendry City of Treet Hoowo. There he must confront the most destructive machines of a long dead civilisation... and a destiny undreamed by man or god.

Sopwith Hammil is a popular but rather stupid TV presenter when a time machine lands in his living room. To save his life and the human race (they're turning the Sun off!), he must find a wife inside three hours. Meanwhile, 197 years later, in a world that makes 1984 look like Brave New World, beautiful Hsia Shan-Yun is fighting the future--and losing. Meanwhile, on Alpha Grommett, two married robots find their love-life has become depressingly mechanical. Meanwhile, the wacky astrologer O'Flaherty Gribble has discovered the long-lost secret of the Callisto Effect. Meanwhile, in a pact with the devil...

On Shrirampur, Chakravalin Chakravatin is heir to a galactic empire being forged by his monstrous father, the dictator, Jagannatha, a man who has taken from him the woman he loves. Chakravalin has vowed to reclaim her and to stand against everything that Empire means... On Earth, young dayton Ellis struggles with approaching manhood--and with a larger mystery, alien beyond his comprehension... And watching over it all are the Kleth, immortal beings, withdrawn from human affairs, returned to their homeworld within the singularity at the galactic core....

For centuries, the legendary demons captured the imaginations of three alien races. Now, these all too real creatures are after their souls-ninety trillion souls in all. Ninety trillion Fausts to corrupt. Ninety trillion lives to be saved... or destroyed.

When Taharqa "Harq" Douglass injures his eye in a freak accident, he discovers that his bizarre immigrant doctor friend Thago is more than a mere muckle-mouthed fish-out-of-water, but an interplanetary "Warmunk" investigating a cosmic mystery and fighting a war across this solar system.

Learning that he possesses of the visionary capacity of chronosis, Harq finds himself drafted into Thago's mission to rescue a princess, free an enslaved boy, and transform an age-old conflict that could claim millions of lives. Fighting against fanatics and sheltering inside the doomed Soviet space station Mir, Harq faces the starkest stakes of his life: evolve or die.

During March, 2001, junior high school teacher Taharqa "Harq" Douglass discovered two life-altering realities: that his foreign doctor friend Sayntomush Binipythagó "Thagó" Barabdura was in fact a Suftem Warmunk from a solar systemic civilisation of Numans entirely unknown to the people of Earth, and that Harq himself possessed chronosis, the ability to behold the future.

Dragged into a virtual suicide mission to rescue the Numan princess Azir Schtagfayar Utto, upon whose fate depended millions of people, Thagó and Harq stormed the Diefenbunker in southern Alberta, liberated their target from her kidnappers, and then escaped into orbit, only to have Thagó's vessel destroyed by terrorist reinforcements.

After killing the attackers and then commandeering the doomed Soviet space station Mir, Harq, the Princess, Thagó, and Thagó's sullen Human assistant Saynkandake MarAset Shanadakhete made their way to a safehouse on Venus, known to Numans as planet Tluwitl, "the bordello of the solar system." There, Thagó's team emancipated an enslaved, mysterious, traumatised, and dangerous Human boy named Ooropos Poldleol-nim Kikotijototitl, nicknamed Ti-Joto, before the Princess revealed her true nature and traumatised Harq, perhaps permanently.

Arriving on Qorodis, the political-economic centre of the System, Thagó enrolled Harq and Ti-Joto in the Suftem Assembly to train as Chronostics and ascend to what Thagó claimed was their fate: to be the ultimate Seers who would discover the means to destroy all evil, reshape all civilisation, and reveal the nature, origin, and destiny of the universe.

But not even the Chronostics foresaw the terrorist attack that turned the cosmopolis of Naayt into an inferno, nor the security sweep that put Humans by the tens of thousands, including Harq and Ti-Joto, into a secret "white hole" prison, where not even Thagó could find them, and simple survival is an open question....