Tales of adventure and suspense:

- Five stage magicians set out to topple Hitler in 1934.
- A middle-aged lawyer finds himself battling new, predatory species.
- A hate-filled demagogue threatens the peaceful existence of the cats and dogs at the city dump.
- A secret agent in 1963 Egypt must stop a madman bent on world domination.

These four stories show Lewis Shiner writing 'hard-edged, often political genre fiction at its finest,' (Publishers Weekly). For those new to Shiner's work, Heroes and Villains is an ideal starting point, offering the complex characters and moral issues of his acclaimed novels in condensed and action-packed form. For Shiner's many fans, who include George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Lethem, and Karen Joy Fowler, no further incentive is required.