What’s that, you say? There are Superhero stories that aren’t about the Avengers? Who knew?! 😛
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Join the action with the Amazon best-selling YA superhero series! The worst summer of Carrie Hauser’s life began with her parents’ divorce and ended with her receiving superhuman abilities from a dying alien. Now Carrie is trying to put her life back together, and all that stands in her way are an insane artificial intelligence, the mercenary known as Manticore, and a mysterious organization that wants to claim her power for itself. Save the day? Sure — as soon as school lets out.
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Back home in Atalanta, a serial killer is targeting the students at Goldman University. Before long she must juggle college classes with sneaking out of the house after dark to battle alien monsters. Estelle’s life is in danger, but who can she trust: handsome Captain Copper from military intelligence, or hunky Toby, the tough gangster with a motorbike? Both men have secret agendas, but falling in love is not in their plans.
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After a brutal attack, medical student Cassie Whelan discovers she has empathic healing abilities. She’s become an exohuman – a non-human according to the law. She must choose between hiding the miracles she can perform or becoming an anonymous, numbered government slave – like Guardian 175, the horribly disfigured exo who is falling in love with her. With her empathic senses, she can actually feel his growing affection for her. But his loyalties are divided between love and duty. She wants to trust him, but betrayal by him could destroy everything. And the one thing she can’t heal is her own heart.
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But a mysterious warlord and his terrorist network waits in the shadows, planning to use superhumans for their own nefarious purposes!
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Nobody said being married was easy, but try being married to a superhero. Not only is there laundry, cooking, and a career to balance, but throw in a few supervillains and your day’s booked.
Ariana, Victoria, and Emma’s men spend more time saving the world than doing dishes. These wives want some semblance of a normal married life, but would settle for an uninterrupted meal together.
How can they compete with saving the world?
When a catastrophic earthquake devastates Shadow Town and crime spirals out of control, the city needs help.
Everyone expected the superheroes to save the day, but nobody expected the wives’ help too…
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Dawn Takahashai knows all about superheroes.
She’s been a fan of them for years. So when she’s granted an impressive powerset of her own, she dives right in, eager to prove herself as Bailey City’s first superhero: Miss Red and Black.
Her first challenge is Faultline. He’s powerful, smart and, as a henchman for Bailey City’s first supervillain, standing right in her way. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that under the mask, Faultline is Alex Gage, a working-class guy trying to scrounge together enough money to help support his younger sisters.
Dawn has no idea that the charming and seemingly straightforward Alex is Faultline. Alex has no idea that the adorably awkward Dawn is the superhero he clashes with at night.
And Dawn and Alex have a date next week.
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The Just Cause Universe is the original superhero universe created by Ian Thomas Healy and published by Local Hero Press. It focuses on diverse, complex characters in a gritty, realistic setting despite their fanciful abilities.
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No powers? No problem!
That’s never stopped Alice before, and it’s not going to stop her from finding her aunt’s killer. Especially not now that she’s become the legendary vigilante Serpent.
But being a hero doesn’t come with instructions and one mistake unleashes the living nightmare Phantasm upon Jet City.
With no time to waste, Alice and her super-powered allies, vow to end this fight. But is her determination enough to protect the city or will defeating Phantasm demand a hero’s sacrifice?
Serpent’s Sacrifice is the first book in The Phantasm Trilogy, a twist on the popular superhero mythos. If you like brave heroines, chilling villains, and nail-biting action, then you’ll love the thrilling emergence of the Serpent!
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Jill Andersen is one of Baltimore’s best and brightest detectives, but she harbors a dark secret — a secret that threatens to come out when the body of Dr. Trent Roberts is pulled out of the Chesapeake Bay. Dr. Roberts’ connection to Jill reveals a past that involves a tour in Iraq, a secretive cybernetic experiment, and a conspiracy that involves a native son.
Can Jill solve the case while still keeping her secret? Will her partners at the Seventh Precinct find out what she’s so desperate to hide? What was Dr. Roberts looking into that led to his murder? And perhaps the biggest question of all…
Who is Bounty?
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A below-average underdog. A supercharged crime-fighter. Their shared secret could transform the world.
Kalum Walker lives in the shadow of his athletic older brother. Scrawny and prone to panic attacks, he’s a far cry from the superheroes he doodles in his notebook. When his brother steals his meds to help calm his game time nerves, he doesn’t put up a fight. After all, the fate of his family rides on his brother’s performance. But without his pills, Kalum’s blackouts begin getting worse… and a disturbing voice inside his head starts urging him into some dangerous situations.
When a blackout-related encounter with bullies puts him in a hospital bed, he starts to notice mysterious bruises all over his body. As he learns of a masked crusader serving up a new kind of justice outside the Corporation compound, he realizes the vigilante bears a striking resemblance to his superheroic sketches. Locked in a battle with the voice inside his head, Kalum must solve the mystery of the infamous Steel Falcon and save his brother before he loses control for good.
Awakening is the first fast-paced novel in the Steel Falcon YA sci-fi superhero series. If you like immersive future worlds, family drama, and edge-of-your-seat twists, then you’ll love N.K. Quinn’s action-packed coming-of-age tale.
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Criterion is the world’s mightiest hero.
His sidekicks just found his body.
The Cadets are shattered by the death of their idol. Unable to maintain their brave and plucky façade, they are consumed by strife and jealousy.
The only thing keeping them together is terror. Once protected from on high, they are now isolated and vulnerable. Can they cover up Criterion’s death and avoid a global meltdown while his murderer is still on the loose? What hope do they have against an enemy that can kill anyone?
Who killed Criterion? Who will die next?
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In the dying world of 2027, there’s no place worse than Babylon.
The fallen city once known as New York is now ruled by feudal gangs and plagued by doomsday cultists. No sane soul ventures there willingly, but former childhood friends Morgan Whitechapel and Kurt Petrovich have no choice.
Fate once separated the compassionate, streetwise survivor and the brooding son of privilege. But the dangerous attentions their newly-manifested superhuman powers bring force them from their homes and reunite them on the savage streets. Their only hope for survival lies with each other – and with a pair of strange nomads who possess powers of their own. Against all odds, these extraordinary young people will fight to make a new home for themselves in the bones of the Big Apple.
Together, they might just stand a chance…
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Superheroes aren’t born. They’re moulded by government academies.
Ellen doesn’t remember much about her parents, they died when she was four. Raised by her aunt she’s envied for years the homo-magis children called on to be tested and subsequently enrolled in one of the five academy’s for heroes.
Ellen isn’t a homo-magis.
Or so she thought.
Her parents were two of the first Superheroes, their lives sacrificed to stop Novaside and save their only child.
Ecstatic, yet a little nervous to finally be a part of the world she’d dreamed of, Ellen is off to Imperium Academy.
But her classing doesn’t go as expected.
Instead of joining the ranks of the illustrious Star Heroes, Ellen is regulated to the role of Sidekick, after all, night vision is barely a superpower.
Many have begun to question the need for Sidekicks, some teachers even suggesting they would be better suited to other employment.
But with Novaside getting bolder, and her latest attack hitting too close to home, Ellen is determined to stay at the academy and prove them wrong.
After all, where better to learn to be a hero than a school full of supers?
I’ve read a couple of fantasy/magic-based stories using the elements as the source for magic, and I liked the everyday approach to them in this story. Catherine and her gifted circle of friends lead pretty ordinary lives, but they use their gifts to help others in subtle ways every day. I WOULD say that there’s nothing flashy about the use of elemental magic in this book, but then again, there is the whole climax scene where they have to save the planet.
Veldkamp does something really daring with this book, which is basically retell the entire first book, but from a different character’s perspective. This kind of worried me that there’d be no mystery or suspense, but there really was a WHOLE other side plot going that we saw very little of in the first book. I was really impressed how well this worked. For me, this book was even stronger than the first because there was more danger, more intrigue, and more magically gifted people to get to know.
This felt like a book I would’ve had to read in an English Literature class in college – and I mean that in a good way. Everything about the writing and the story felt legitimately true to the period, like this was an old, classic book I’d somehow missed all these years.
Sunshine Somerville 