Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain


Book Description

Penelope Akk wants to be a superhero. She's got superhero parents. She's got the ultimate mad science power, filling her life with crazy gadgets even she doesn't understand. She has two super powered best friends. In middle school, the line between good and evil looks clear. In real life, nothing is that clear. All it takes is one hero's sidekick picking a fight, and Penny and her friends are labeled supervillains. In the process, Penny learns a hard lesson about villainy: She's good at it. Criminal masterminds, heroes in power armor, bottles of dragon blood, alien war drones, shape shifters and ghosts, no matter what the super powered world throws at her, Penny and her friends come out on top. They have to. If she can keep winning, maybe she can clear her name before her mom and dad find out.




Please Don't Tell My Parents I Work for a Supervillain


Book Description

What do you do when you have the wrong super powers? Magenta's older brother is a superhero. She's starting high school at the school where kids with powers go, including the famous Inscrutable Machine. Except, Magenta's powers are no good for fighting. Her potions are useful, not dangerous. Her other power is just humiliating. What Magenta has plenty of is determination, and she tries fighting a supervillain anyway. She fails. But for Magenta, failure is the beginning, not the ending. Suddenly she has a part-time job working for that same supervillain, who doesn't seem very villainous. She spends her afternoons buying mad science from smugglers, copying memories into a magic book, delivering messages to evil lawyers, and always, always, putting on a show. Soon, she's ducking heroes who want to save her from herself, and her best friends, who don't know the sidekick they're chasing is Magenta. Making sure her parents don't find out is the easy part.




Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon


Book Description

Supervillains do not merely play hooky. True, coming back to school after a month spent fighting—and defeating—adult superheroes is a bit of a comedown for The Inscrutable Machine. When offered the chance to skip school in the most dramatic way possible, Penelope Akk can't resist. With the help of a giant spider and mysterious red goo, she builds a spaceship and flies to Jupiter. Mutant goats. Secret human colonies. A war between three alien races with humanity as the prize. Robot overlords and evil plots. Penny and her friends find all this and more on Jupiter's moons, but what they don't find are any heroes to save the day. Fortunately, they have an angry eleven-year-old and a whole lot of mad science…




Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm Queen of the Dead


Book Description

Avery Special is the world's only living necromancer, and she's pretty bad at it. She also just moved to L.A., where trouble has been waiting for a necromancer. Trouble that doesn't care how strong she is, or that she's only fifteen. Monsters, magical artifacts, occultists and television producers only care that a real necromancer is back. There are definitely upsides. Chris, Annie, Sue, and Peggy have their own creepy super powers and are the best friends a girl could hope to make on her first day in a new city. Her Pudgy Bunny coloring book can teach her more than a stack of grimoires. Her ghostly ancestors are so eager to help it's annoying. Not that she has time for any of that, because Chris and Sue are both in love with her.




Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe Her


Book Description

Middle school supervillain Penny Akk has defeated every challenge thrown against her. She has bested heroes, villains, weirdos who can't make up their minds, robots, aliens, friends, rivals, enemies, natural disasters, secret admirers, and her own shyness. Now she has only one opponent left. Her own super power. ...and the other Penny who stole it.




Super Villain Dad


Book Description

You're probably wondering why we're trying to be so quiet. Well there's a reason. A really BIG reason. He's standing over there--no--to your right--no, THROUGH the fence. Yes, on the other side of the big, nasty looking security fence that is literally shaking because of electric jolts. Yes, him. He's pretty scary looking, right? He's got to be six five, and he's got the face of a serial murderer. It's all sharp and needing shaved. And that whole skin tight prison body suit thing--it's really not fashionable at all, I admit. What? Why's he got a streak of white in his hair? Well, see, that's why we're here. He's a super villain. So why is an innocent little freshman like me and her annoying twin brother sneaking peeks at him through a prison fence? Well... He's our father. At least, that's what we think.




Almost Infamous


Book Description

Eighteen-year-old Aidan Salt isn’t a superhero. With his powerful (and unpredictable) telekinetic abilities he could be one if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He’s unambitious, selfish, and cowardly, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with all the paperwork required to become a professional superhero. But since the money, fame, and women that come with wearing the cape are appealing, he decides to become the first supervillain the world has seen in more than twenty years: Apex Strike. However, he soon finds villainy in a world where the heroes have long since defeated all the supervillains. While half the world’s heroes seem to want him dead, the other half want to hire him as their own personal villain to keep them relevant. Choosing the latter course, Aidan enters a world of fame, fortune, and staged superhero fights that is seemingly everything he ever dreamed of . . . at least until he sees what truly hides behind the cape-and-mask lifestyle. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.




Superman on the Couch


Book Description

Why are so many of the superhero myths tied up with loss, often violent, of parents or parental figures? What is the significance of the dual identity? What makes some superhuman figures "good" and others "evil"? Why are so many of the prime superheroes white and male? How has the superhero evolved over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries? And how might the myths be changing? Why is it that the key superhero archetypes - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, the X-Men - touch primal needs and experiences in everyone? Why has the superhero moved beyond the pages of comics into other media? All these topics, and more, are covered in this lively and original exploration of the reasons why the superhero - in comic books, films, and TV - is such a potent myth for our times and culture.>




I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence!


Book Description

From the internationally bestselling author of Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain comes the story of Spider, Mourning Dove, Goodnight, Mish-Mosh, and Psychopomp! Before there was Bad Penny and the Inscrutable Machine... there was TEAM TINY! Being a superhero should be fun. After all, a world of super powers is a world where amazonian juggernauts made of candy battle guys in spandex that drive talking cars. Irene loves that weirdness, loves the game of fighting, and loves being a four foot tall woman who still gets to drop big heavy objects on villains' heads. In 1980, that fun is in danger. A mad scientist who murders people for his research has everyone afraid. Two of the friendliest super powered rivals around stop playing and go for the kill. If superheroes and villains aren't safe in their own homes, how can having powers be anything but a nightmare? Irene will not let that happen. She wants to show her friends—a ten-year-old grim reaper and a zombie mish-mosh of living and metal parts—that their lives don't have to be grim. With the help of a superintelligent spider, Team Tiny will make the world fun again. Except maybe it's the spider who's in charge after all...




How to Be a Supervillain


Book Description

In this rollicking middle-grade adventure and national bestseller, Michael Fry's witty text and hysterical artwork combines superhero action with classic fish-out-of-water humor. Victor Spoil comes from a long line of famous supervillains and he's fully expected to join their ranks one day. But to his family's utter disappointment, Victor doesn't have a single bad-guy bone in his body. He won't run with scissors, he always finishes his peas, and he can't stand to be messy. Hopeless! As a last-ditch effort before they give up and let him be a -- gasp! -- civilian, Victor's exasperated parents send him to apprentice under a disgraced supervillain called The Smear. This matchup starts off as a complete disaster, but Victor and The Smear eventually find that they have a lot to learn from each other. When the stakes get high as Victor is forced to choose between his mentor and his family morals (or lack thereof) . . . what will the world's nicest bad guy do?