How would a world populated by superheroes differ from our own?

Not much.

If you have a rare skill or a talent or an ability that you're not using, then maybe you could relate to our heroes: Orville Ortley, Mucus-Man, whose snot has the explosive power of a howitzer shell Kevin Kiley, Count Karma, invincible wonder of the ethereal plane who's utterly useless on earth Mindy Maguire, Supermodel, upon whom the goddesses bestowed the most unwelcome power a Smith College women's studies major could imagine

Instead of fighting evil on a cosmic scale, they guard St. Louis's Chesterfield Mall. That is, until the day the villains' lobby, the "American Malevolence Institute," sets its sights on this ordinary shopping center. If the Institute should defeat this discount-bin collection of mall cops, it would mean the end of all life on earth.

Battling these villains would be an epic struggle in itself but, along the way, our heroes must also contend with the headline-grabbing super-group The Crusaders, a once-peaceable young woman who has been transformed into a chaotic beast after having been bitten by a radioactive badger, stifling government bureaucracy, the capriciousness of deities and, of course, their own personal shortcomings and that of their teammates.

Who will survive? Who will prevail? Who will prove themselves mighty?

When two rival presidents in the distant future, foes since their youth, declare a hyper-power war, they set in motion events which transform America's place in the world ... and beyond. With devilish delight icons, role models and expectations are upended with laugh-out-loud irreverence. Characters defy tradition and stereotyping, revealing the devastating high jinks which - without doubt - exist within the hallowed halls of existing rival countries, let alone imaginary future nations and governments. Outrageous political prods and withering insight makes Land That I Love a compelling lampoon.

Age of Certainty gives ten authors' answers to the question, "What if God existed?" Suppose the theory is true that we're biologically hardwired to believe in God - Brandon H. Bell wonders if that's evidence enough that He is objectively real. ... Imagine the traditional, Western version of God - now imagine along with Patrick Evans if the God revealed tomorrow has absolutely nothing to do with any of that. ... David J. Fielding introduces a character who wouldn't hesitate to kill God for the evil He has brought to bear, even if the result is just another form of an absence of good. ... and Nebula Award laureate James Morrow asks if God would exist in the absence of misleading proof planted by a talking, time-traveling cyborg tortoise who shoots lasers out his eyes. Edited and Introduced by William Freedman, with a cover by Elena Nazzaro, other contributors include Jennifer Rachel Baumer, Ron S. Friedman, James Hartley, Brian K. Lowe, Ian R. Thorpe and Jeffrey Witthauer.

Few if any writers in the English language have been cited, praised, chided, or marvelled at more routinely than Joseph Conrad for the perplexing evasiveness, contradictoriness, and indeterminacy of their fiction. William Freedman argues that the explanations typically offered for these identifying characteristics of much of Conrad's work are inadequate if not mistaken. Freedman's claim is that the illusiveness of a coherent interpretation of Conrad's novels and shorter fictions is owed not primarily to the inherent slipperiness or inadequacy of language or the consequence of a wilful self-deconstruction. Nor is it a product of the writer's philosophical nihilism or a realized aesthetic of suggestive vagueness. Rather, Freedman argues, the perplexing elusiveness of Conrad's fiction is the consequence of a pervasive ambivalence toward threatening knowledge, a protective reluctance and recoil that are not only inscribed in Conrad's tales and novels, but repeatedly declared, defended, and explained in his letters and essays. Conrad's narrators and protagonists often set out on an apparent quest for hidden knowledge or are drawn into one. But repelled or intimidated by the looming consequences of their own curiosity and fervour, they protectively obscure what they have barely glimpsed or else retreat to an armoury of practiced distractions. The result is a confusingly choreographed dance of approach and withdrawal, fascination and revulsion, revelation and concealment. The riddling contradictions of these fictions are thus in large measure the result of this ambivalence, their evasiveness the mark of intimidation's triumph over fascination. The idea of dangerous and forbidden knowledge is at least as old as Genesis, and Freedman provides a background for Conrad's recoil from full exposure in the rich admonitory history of such knowledge in theology, myth, philosophy, and literature. He traces Conrad's impassioned, at times pleading case for protective avoidance in the writer's letters, essays, and prefaces, and he elucidates its enactment and its connection to Conrad's signature evasiveness in a number of short stories and novels, with special attention to The Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Under Western Eyes, and The Rescue.