Showing results for "Villains" in Literature & Fiction

“Much like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, M. L. Rio’s sparkling debut is a richly layered story of love, friendship, and obsession...If We Were Villains will keep you riveted through its final, electrifying moments.” --Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of...

With a half-frozen fortress, a vampire sister who hits like a natural disaster, and a blood-drinking dryad fertilizing his fields, I have everything I need to found a kingdom. All I have to do is outmaneuver a werewolf plague, keep a wind mage addicted to my blood-spiked drugs, and survive a royal court full of nobles who smile while they plot my execution. I've played this game. I know how every major event is supposed to go. The problem? I've already changed too much.

The Boys meets Assistant to the Villain in the electrifying, sharp, violent, and hilarious sequel to the highly acclaimed novel, Hench. Filled with a queer and neurodiverse cast, Villain asks the question: what happens when a diabolically brilliant henchperson looks back at their already storied...

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates - brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognised the same sharpness and ambition in one another. A shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death-experiences and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong. They become EOs, ExtraOrdinaries, leaving a body in their wake and turning on each other.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

Gifted with meta-human powers, Tori Rivas kept away from the limelight, preferring to work as a thief in the shadows. But when she's captured trying to rob a vault that belongs to a secret guild of villains, she's offered a hard choice: prove she has what it takes to join them or be eliminated. Apprenticed to one of the world's most powerful (and supposedly dead) villains, she is thrust into a strange world where the lines that divide superheroes and criminals are more complex than they seem.

Feared. Ruthless. Unforgivable. August Archdale, Earl of Culross, has earned every dark whisper attached to his name. Stopping Meghan Smith's wedding is not cruelty—it is necessity. Her family's rising shipping dynasty will ruin him, and the Earl of Culross does not lose. Not his power. Not...

On a typical day, on an average train platform, two warring sister goddesses found their avatars. One avatar, the young Yoshi, was swept away to the world of Ephemera to be a great hero of honor, courage, and light. The other, the not-so-young Seiji, was swept away to become a dark lord out to kill or conquer all in his path. But Seiji is in absolutely no mood for that nonsense. It's bad enough that on Earth he was a closed-off, misanthropic grouch with zero patience for other people. Now he's supposed to muster enough of a give-a-damn to lead vile hordes?

Brought to you by Penguin. CUE THE CHAOS. CUT THE LIGHTS. IT'S TIME TO TAKE TO THE STAGE. Caraval meets One Dark Window in the spellbinding new enemies-to-lovers fantasy set in a mysterious theatre where godlike creatures run the show and mortals compete for immortality. ‘DARK FANTASY AT ITS...

Damien Nightshade, a discarded royal masquerading as a Professor in one of the continent's greatest magic academies, is considered a mid-level boss—one fated to die in every playthrough. Now, I have transmigrated into his body. A game-like world has become my reality, and instead of being its hero, I'm cursed to die a pitiful death as a fated villain. But why should I accept life as a third-rate villain when I can strive to become the unbeatable final boss?

Hi, I'm Jackson Blackwell. Professional bad guy, minor god, and most importantly, the Shadow Master. I'm the multiverse's first, best, and… ahem, only, villain advisor. I slither into other gods' universes and do what i do best: make their villains better. For profit and personal power, that is. I'm a villain after all. Sadly, even the infamous Shadow Master can get double crossed. Trapped in a horribly generic fantasy realm and left to die, I must use my skills and wits to exploit the rules, mock genre flaws, undermine authority, and win the day.

Supervillains are murdering people in the streets, but yet superheroes are more concerned with gaining popularity than bringing the villains to justice. These villains think they are above the law and that nobody can stop them, but they never planned for me. I’ll murder every one of them with my powersuit, traps, and sidekicks. And if killing bad guys makes me a villain in the eyes of the heroes, well...I’ll destroy them too.

Sean O'Donnell, small-time villain and loyal family man, walked out on his family nineteen years ago and hasn't been heard of since. Now his daughter Iris has returned to the East End in the hope of finding out what happened. But it isn't going to be easy. Everyone close to Iris, including her mother, seems intent on keeping the truth hidden. With the rest of her life in a mess, Iris struggles to make sense of her murky family history. But a chance meeting with the mysterious Guy Wilder changes everything.

It's hard to make a dishonest buck in Sin City, especially when a rogue FBI agent is gunning for your head. Flat broke and one step ahead of the law, Daniel Faust flees Vegas and lands in Chicago, where a risky heist promises to fill his pockets with cash.

Night Terror, the greatest villain Starlight City has ever known, finally had it all. A beautiful girl she couldn’t get enough of. The city finally sort of liked her after she saved it from a giant robot attack. Now it was time to live happily ever after, right? Yeah, right. It turns out saving the city and getting the girl was only the beginning of more trouble. She wanted to be Starlight City's villainous overlord, not the city's heroic savior. The girl she can’t get enough of is also the world’s greatest hero, which made for a relationship that takes “it’s complicated” to a whole new level.

He's a neurotic serial killer. She's his sweet, innocent maid. Or... is she? Marlowe Spencer-Astor is a killer in crisis. It’s been one hundred seventy-four days since his last murder, and not even therapy—forced upon him by his overbearing mother—can reignite his bloodlust. But then he stumbles upon Minnie. She's filthy, half-starved and homeless. She's the one. The perfect victim. His missing muse. There’s just one problem—he can’t seem to kill her. Instead, Marlowe hires her as his maid, convincing himself that he’s merely biding his time, perfecting his plan.

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 20 years: Apex Strike.

A former superhero, cast down from glory, finds himself stuck in a town whose gaze remains fixed toward the past. A priestess in another realm journeys onward, uncovering troubling secrets about both her world and her summoned champion. A camp for newly turned meta-humans must cope with a siege from a nigh-endless army of unusual creatures, as a handful of campers battle their way toward the source of the danger. Between grand adventures, what mishaps may occur in the world of the Villains’ Code? These are the smaller selections, short sagas within the greater story.

All four books in Phase 1 of the Heroes and Villains Series bundled into one steamy collection that brings your superhero fantasies to life . . .

The four rules of freelance villainy are as follows: 1. Always wear a mask 2. Never hurt civilians 3. Never kill the heroes you’re paid to fight. 4. And the bad guy always loses. Victor, better known as the super villain Magneron, always played by those rules. He fought the bad fight, got beat, and got paid. And that worked well for him and the many women who loved him. What it didn't work for was the Guild of Villainous Foes, the premiere bad guy organization on the planet!