The title story, “Death in Trieste,” sets the scene in 1920s Berlin, a bustling cultural hotspot in the shadow of the coming Nazism. Here, a host of unlikely characters — time-travelling David Bowie, Rasputin, Nosferatu, Marlene Dietrich, and more — are all connected by a group of Dadaists who perform the art of rationality through madness. In “The Magritte Affair,” a wisecracking pair of detectives must crack a case involving art forgeries, masked men, and mysterious disappearances — all linked to the surrealist world of the famous Belgian painter. Finally, in “Sweet Dreams,” Jason reimagines the New Wave artists of the 1980s as X-Men-esque superheroes. While this supergroup easily dispatches such supernatural threats as living mummies, animated suits of armor, and rampaging golems, they soon face their biggest challenge yet, as a giant meteorite hurtles toward the Earth.

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  9/17/2025