Short Story

A superhero's intern falls in love with a supervillain's apprentice in this star-crossed LGBT YA story from The Book Smugglers. Here's the thing about being a superhero intern: there's a lot less crime fighting than you think there will be, what with the whole liability issue and the administrative headache of constantly monitoring the Heroic Help Hotline. The most action that Jamie sees happens when he is kidnapped by the supervillain of the week—and then waits for his boss, Captain Superior, to show up and rescue him. Again. On his most recent nabbing, Jamie gets to meet Tad, Terrorantula's new villainous apprentice. Even though they are supposed to be on opposite sides (or are they?), sparks fly almost immediately. So, when Tad offers to give Jamie much-needed self-defense classes, how could Jamie pass the opportunity to hang out with the coolest (and hottest) guy he knows? But Tad has a secret—one that threatens the budding relationship between the two teenage sidekicks, and could destroy Captain Superior forever.

An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life. In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.