Eighteen-year-old Aidan Salt isn’t a superhero. With his powerful (and unpredictable) telekinetic abilities he could be one if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He’s unambitious, selfish, and cowardly, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with all the paperwork required to become a professional superhero. But since the money, fame, and women that come with wearing the cape are appealing, he decides to become the first supervillain the world has seen in more than twenty years: Apex Strike. However, he soon finds villainy in a world where the heroes have long since defeated all the supervillains. While half the world’s heroes seem to want him dead, the other half want to hire him as their own personal villain to keep them relevant. Choosing the latter course, Aidan enters a world of fame, fortune, and staged superhero fights that is seemingly everything he ever dreamed of . . . at least until he sees what truly hides behind the cape-and-mask lifestyle. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Foster McFee dreams of having her own cooking show like her idol, celebrity chef Sonny Kroll. Macon Dillard's goal is to be a documentary filmmaker. Foster's mother Rayka longs to be a headliner instead of a back-up singer. And Miss Charleena plans a triumphant return to Hollywood. Everyone has a dream, but nobody is even close to famous in the little town of Culpepper. Until some unexpected events shake the town and its inhabitants-and put their big ambitions to the test. Full of humor, unforgettable characters, surprises, and lots and lots of heart, this is Joan Bauer at her most engaging.

"A memoir about a life almost lost and a revealing look at the dark side of hip hop's golden era ... a story of struggle, survival, and hope down the mean streets of New York City" --

The fundamental concept developed in this book is that in order to achieve security in a complex world, it is essential to ensure that we have sufficient variety available to cope with complexity and its potential dangers. The book develops many facets of this idea, covering all major contemporary world issues, including energy, food and environmental security, climate change, economic transitions, and the role of technology. Encompassing a uniquely diverse collection of viewpoints, this book achieves a highly original contribution to the debate about where our civilization is heading. Airy speculation is however eschewed: arguments are developed on the basis of solid evidence available to all. This book by no means attempts to have the last word: it invites response and debate. Above all, it contributes to deepening understanding of what it means to be human in the face of our ever-growing knowledge about the universe and its nature. And, the ideas developed lead to some surprisingly definite conclusions about the policies to be promulgated in the future.

Throughout the history of the genre, the superhero has been characterised primarily by physical transformation and physical difference. Superhero Bodies: Identity, Materiality, Transformation explores the transformation of the superhero body across multiple media forms including comics, film, television, literature and the graphic novel. How does the body of the hero offer new ways to imagine identities? How does it represent or subvert cultural ideals? How are ideologies of race, gender and disability signified or destabilised in the physicality of the superhero? How are superhero bodies drawn, written and filmed across diverse forms of media and across histories? This volume collects essays that attend to the physicality of superheroes: the transformative bodies of superheroes, the superhero’s position in urban and natural spaces, the dialectic between the superhero’s physical and metaphysical self, and the superhero body’s relationship with violence. This will be the first collection of scholarly research specifically dedicated to investigating the diversity of superhero bodies, their emergence, their powers, their secrets, their histories and their transformations.