Book picks similar to
Secret Origins by Michael C. Bailey


superhero
science-fiction
young-adult
super-hero

Hard Times in Dragon City


Matt Forbeck - 2012
    Ever since he and his treasure-hunting friends struck it big and called it quits a decade back, it seems like things have slid downhill.It’s hard enough to scrape by in a sprawling mountain city in which elves and dwarves live higher than humans in every way. It’s worse at night, when the groans of the zombies laying an eternal siege to the city provide a ceaseless reminder that the Dragon Emperor himself is the only thing that keeps the hordes of hungry dead from storming the walls.When Max is called in to help invesigate the wholesale slaughter of a long-dead dwarf friend’s family, he thinks maybe he’s finally hit bottom. Then the love of his life — the elf who left him when their careers as adventurers ended — walks back through his door, desperate for his help and with nowhere else to turn.It’s not getting any easier. That’s for sure.Hard Times in Dragon City is the first novel in the Shotguns & Sorcery setting.

TimeRiders


Alex Scarrow - 2010
    They are recruited by an agency that no one knows exists, with only one purpose—to fix broken history. Because time travel is here, and there are those who would go back in time and change the past. That’s why the TimeRiders exist: to protect us. To stop time travel from destroying the world...

Sidekicks


Arthur Mayor - 2019
    Paper or plastic, cake or pie, tackle my chem homework or give a supervillain a well-deserved smackdown? (The answer’s obvious: cake.) When the leader of the world’s most powerful superhero team asked me to become Raven, his apprentice, that was the easiest choice ever. But I blew it. Now, all the superheroes are dead, killed in an instant by an enemy they never saw coming. And I have another choice: give up and hide inside my normal life or master my powers and assemble a team of fellow trainees to protect the city. If you enjoy action-packed good versus evil battles, snarky banter, and plucky teenage superheroes who refuse to quit, you will love Raven’s adventures in Sidekicks, the first book of Superpower Chronicles. Perfect for fans of Spider-Man and The Teen Titans. Get your copy today! Superpower Chronicles SIDEKICKS (Book 1) HEROES (Book 2) VIGILANTES (Available October 11, 2019) VILLAINS (Available November 8, 2019) ASSASSINS (Available 2020)

Dreadnought


April Daniels - 2017
    But before he expired, Dreadnought passed his mantle to her, and those secondhand superpowers transformed Danny’s body into what she’s always thought it should be. Now there’s no hiding that she’s a girl. It should be the happiest time of her life, but Danny’s first weeks finally living in a body that fits her are more difficult and complicated than she could have imagined. Between her father’s dangerous obsession with “curing” her girlhood, her best friend suddenly acting like he’s entitled to date her, and her fellow superheroes arguing over her place in their ranks, Danny feels like she’s in over her head.She doesn’t have much time to adjust. Dreadnought’s murderer—a cyborg named Utopia—still haunts the streets of New Port City, threatening destruction. If Danny can’t sort through the confusion of coming out, master her powers, and stop Utopia in time, humanity faces extinction.

Tin Star


Cecil Castellucci - 2014
    All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station. When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.

For the Win


Cory Doctorow - 2010
    Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world's poorest countries, where countless "gold farmers," bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of "General Robotwalla." In Shenzen, heart of China's industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister's people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.Imbued with the same lively, subversive spirit and thrilling storytelling that made LITTLE BROTHER an international sensation, FOR THE WIN is a prophetic and inspiring call-to-arms for a new generation

Off to Be the Wizard


Scott Meyer - 2013
    With every use of this ability, though, Martin finds his little “tweaks” have not escaped notice. Rather than face prosecution, he decides instead to travel back in time to the Middle Ages and pose as a wizard.What could possibly go wrong?An American hacker in King Arthur’s court, Martin must now train to become a full-fledged master of his powers, discover the truth behind the ancient wizard Merlin… and not, y’know, die or anything.

When We Wake


Karen Healey - 2013
    Sixteen-year-old Tegan is just like every other girl living in 2027—she's happiest when playing the guitar, she's falling in love for the first time, and she's joining her friends to protest the wrongs of the world: environmental collapse, social discrimination, and political injustice.But on what should have been the best day of Tegan's life, she dies—and wakes up a hundred years later, locked in a government facility with no idea what happened.The future isn't all she had hoped it would be, and when appalling secrets come to light, Tegan must make a choice: Does she keep her head down and survive, or fight for a better world?

Control Point


Myke Cole - 2012
    Fugitive. Sorcerer.Across the country and in every nation, people are waking up with magical talents. Untrained and panicked, they summon storms, raise the dead, and set everything they touch ablaze. Army officer Oscar Britton sees the worst of it. A lieutenant attached to the military's Supernatural Operations Corps, his mission is to bring order to a world gone mad. Then he abruptly manifests a rare and prohibited magical power, transforming him overnight from government agent to public enemy number one. The SOC knows how to handle this kind of situation: hunt him down--and take him out. Driven into an underground shadow world, Britton is about to learn that magic has changed all the rules he's ever known, and that his life isn't the only thing he's fighting for.

Pathfinder


Orson Scott Card - 2010
    A dangerous path. Rigg is well trained at keeping secrets. Only his father knows the truth about Rigg's strange talent for seeing the paths of people's pasts. But when his father dies, Rigg is stunned to learn just how many secrets Father had kept from him--secrets about Rigg's own past, his identity, and his destiny. And when Rigg discovers that he has the power not only to see the past, but also to change it, his future suddenly becomes anything but certain. Rigg’s birthright sets him on a path that leaves him caught between two factions, one that wants him crowned and one that wants him dead. He will be forced to question everything he thinks he knows, choose who to trust, and push the limits of his talent…or forfeit control of his destiny.

Control


Lydia Kang - 2013
    But before Zel has a plan, Dyl is taken by strangers using bizarre sensory weapons, and Zel finds herself in a safe house for teens who aren’t like any she’s ever seen before—teens who shouldn’t even exist. Using broken-down technology, her new friends’ peculiar gifts, and her own grit, Zel must find a way to get her sister back from the kidnappers who think a powerful secret is encoded in Dyl’s DNA. Set in 2150—in a world of automatic cars, nightclubs with auditory ecstasy drugs, and guys with four arms—this is about the human genetic “mistakes” that society wants to forget, and the way that outcasts can turn out to be heroes.

The Girl from Everywhere


Heidi Heilig - 2016
    Along the way they have found crewmates and friends, and even a disarming thief who could come to mean much more to Nix.But the end to it all looms closer every day.Her father is obsessed with obtaining the one map, 1868 Honolulu, that could take him back to his lost love, Nix’s mother. Even though getting it—and going there—could erase Nix’s very existence.For the first time, Nix is entering unknown waters.She could find herself, find her family, find her own fantastical ability, her own epic love.Or she could disappear.

All the Birds in the Sky


Charlie Jane Anders - 2016
    But as adults they both wind up in near-future San Francisco, where Laurence is an engineering genius and Patricia works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s ever growing ailments. But something is determined to bring them back together—to either save the world, or end it.

Sidekick


Auralee Wallace - 2014
    To make matters worse, her twin sister is keeping secrets, loan sharks are circling, and the man of her dreams — a newspaper reporter — is on assignment to bring down everyone with the last name St James.Things are certainly looking bleak for the down-and-out socialite until a good deed throws her into the path of the city’s top crime-fighter, Dark Ryder. Suddenly, Bremy has a new goal: apprentice to a superhero, and start her own crime-fighting career.Ryder has no need for a sidekick, but it turns out the city needs Bremy’s help. Atticus St James is planning the crime of the century, and Bremy may be the only one able to get close enough to her father to stop him.Now all she needs to do is figure out this superhero thing in less than a month, keep her identity secret from the man who could very well be The One, and save the city from total annihilation.Well, no one ever said being a superhero would be easy...

The Indestructibles


Matthew Phillion - 2014
    A ballerina vigilante. A boy with an alien sharing his brain. A girl with a black hole for her heart. And, a werewolf. This is the next generation of heroes Doc Silence has gathered together, a random collection of amazing kids he hopes to train to make the world a better place. But Silence isn't the only one collecting super-powered teenagers. In the shadows, a dark organization — long thought destroyed — has been building a better monster, combining sentient hurricanes with car crash survivors, crafting designer cyborgs, girls made of fire and boys made of pure rage. What is this mysterious organization's goal? And what does it have to do with Doc's past, and his team's future? Will Doc Silence have enough time to teach them to be heroes before they are called upon to save the world — and will his team be ready to accept the mantle as their generation's brightest stars? The Indestructibles introduces Jane, Kate, Billy, Titus, and Emily— Solar, Dancer, Straylight, Fury, and Entropy — to the world as they learn how to use their bizarre powers. Along the way, they also discover something about themselves and whether they have what it takes to save the world. Meanwhile, the mercenary Agent Black and the mysterious Rose find themselves pawns of a villainous organization who plan on changing the world, starting with the creation of a living, breathing, sentient storm system they're able to bend to their will. The Indestructibles, coming soon to a neighborhood near you.