I love superheroes and I like them colorful, weird, larger than life, heroic and good, inspirational and insightful. I don't generally go for deconstructions of or dark takes on the genre. But I liked Vicious. A LOT. It strips down the idea that people with superpowers see themselves as above us mere mortals and it tears apart the whole Good vs Evil, black-and-white tradition of superheroes and supervillains, but it does it with compelling, charismatic characters and an exciting, enthralling plot.
Sixteen teenagers are brought to an arena to fight to the death...sound familiar? Well, you haven't seen it like this before. In Avengers Arena: Kill or Die, local author Dennis Hopeless puts a superhero spin on this twenty-first century trope, pitting a group of young superheroes-in-training against one another. The puppet master in Kill or Die is a supervillain named Arcade, who apparently favors overly elaborate ways to kill his victims, but has perfected an environment designed to coerce these teens into killing one another.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Most people know that these words were said by Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon. Many books have been written and movies made about the early years of space travel and the first astronauts. Except for old articles in LIFE magazine, much less has been written about the wives of those astronauts. Lily Koppel has addressed this lack of information in her book The Astronaut Wives Club.
If you have enjoyed Coulter's seventeen previous FBI thrillers you will continue to do so with Power Play. Savich and Sherlock are assisted by Special Agent Davis Sullivan who, one fall morning when leaving Starbucks on his way to work, helps to stop a car jacking in progress. Unbeknownst to him, the intended victim is U.S. Ambassador Natalie Black who is back in the U.S.
A group novel? Sounds like an exercise in egos, inner-circles, and bad writing to me. But I’d heard Kevin Rabas read his poetry, and read a little bit on my own as well. So, despite my reservations, I gave Green Bike a try and was pleasantly surprised.
What would happen if you had a mole of moles? Or if everybody on planet Earth decided to jump up and down at the same time? How high up would you have to drop a steak for it to be cooked by the time it hit the ground? Former NASA scientist Randall Munroe has been amusing the internet with his stick figure drawings since 2005, mostly on the popular website xkcd.com, but the popular comics website is also home to a column where he answers hypothetical (and very often insane) questions about physics, space, chemistry and just about everything else.
For those who have been enjoying the Temperance Brennan Mysteries by Kathy Reichs, Bones Never Lie brings forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan and Detective Andrew Ryan of Canada back together in the search for a serial murderer.
Ten strangers have come together on a remote English island under false pretenses. Each one bears a dark secret that they have hidden from the world. Stranded on the island and as the guests begin to die one by one, they discover that someone in the company has uncovered those secrets and is willing to make them pay.
Continuing the story of Celia West following the death of her superhero father and the retirement of the superheroes of her beloved city, Celia continues to look out for the best interests of her city and has carefully been watching the grandchildren of the superheroes waiting to see if there is a new generation of powerful superheroes in the making. Two of these new superheroes may be her own daughters Anna and Bethy but so far they aren't exhibiting any signs of superpowers or at least they're not sharing with her if they are developing powers.
Leonard Marnham, an engineer employed by the British post office, has lived an extraordinarily sheltered life when he arrives in 1950s Berlin to work on a collaborative project between the British and Americans to tap into Soviet phone lines. His new job and colleagues, and living on his own for the first time, open him up to a wide variety of new tastes and experiences. As befits the Cold War setting,both his work and personal lives also consist of complex webs of secrecy, fear, mistrust, and paranoia.
