Expecting to become a supervillain on his 16th birthday, Damien Locke, son of one of Golden City's most notorious supervillains, is horrified to discover that he may instead be destined to become a superhero.

Can a half villain ever be a full hero? Damien Locke didn't choose for his supervillain mom to disown him - just because he sort of defied her and ruined her evil plans to take over Golden City - and he didn't choose for his superpower to be flying, a superhero ability that involves his least favorite thing: heights. But now that he's living with his dad's superhero family and enrolling at Heroesworth Academy, he's ready to embrace his new life, get his H, and finally belong somewhere. But belonging isn't as easy as signing up for classes, and Damien finds himself struggling to fit in more than ever. Just when he's sure his fate as a hero has been decided, though, he gets a new villain power that he can't control. And things only get worse when he accidentally screws up one of his sidekick Sarah's gadgets, altering her personality and turning her into a crazed, anti-supervillain vigilante - leaving him no choice but to team up with her annoying superhero boyfriend if he hopes to have any chance of getting the old Sarah back, before she captures - or kills - another supervillain like him.

Damien thinks he has the whole hero thing figured out-he's getting good grades at Heroesworth and acing all his missions-at least until he zaps an unarmed bad guy he believes tortured and murdered children. It turns out the "bad guy" was actually a superhero working with the school. The mission was staged, and Damien blew it. Now his best friend refuses to work with him, his dad is considering getting him professional help, and everyone's questioning whether or not he has a future as a hero-including his grandpa, who will do anything to ensure Damien's future lies in villainy. His grandpa creates a villain organization called the Truth, intent on exposing the way heroes really treat villains. But when the Truth launches its plan and the whole city erupts in chaos, Damien is caught between the opposing sides, and his future is anything but certain. With heroes and villains bent on destroying each other, it's up to him to do whatever it takes to stop the fighting, even if it means betraying the people closest to him.

Part of the Jewish Encounter series In 1656, Amsterdam’s Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twenty–three, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already germinating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original. He went on to produce one of the most ambitious systems in the history of Western philosophy, so ahead of its time that scientists today, from string theorists to neurobiologists, count themselves among Spinoza’s progeny. In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past. Goldstein argues that the trauma of the Inquisition’ s persecution of its forced Jewish converts plays itself out in Spinoza’s philosophy. The excommunicated Spinoza, no less than his excommunicators, was responding to Europe’ s first experiment with racial anti-Semitism. Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero—a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age.

Cancer research has reached a major turning point. The quality and quantity of information gathered about this disease in the past twenty years has revolutionized our understanding of its origins and behavior. No one is better qualified to comment on these dramatic leaps forward than molecular biologist Robert A. Weinberg, director of one of the leading cancer research centers in the world. In One Renegade Cell , Weinberg presents an accessible and state-of-the-art account of how the disease begins and how, one day, it will be cured. Weinberg tells how the roots of cancer were uncovered in 1909 and when the first cancer-causing virus was discovered. He then moves forward to the discovery of the role of chemical carcinogens and radiation in triggering cancer, and relates the remarkable story of the discoveries of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes, the master controllers of normal and malignant cell proliferation. This book, which presumes little prior knowledge of biology, describes the revolution in biomedical research that has finally uncovered the forces driving malignant growth. Drawing on insights that simply were not available until recently, the discoveries presented in One Renegade Cell have already begun to profoundly alter the way that we diagnose and treat human cancers.

"Damien's always been afraid of heights, but he's never been afraid of fieldwork or of being in the spotlight. At least, he wasn't before the gala-- the one where his grandpa nearly caused a massacre and heroes from the League almost killed his best friend. Now he finds himself dreading the very things he used to love, and all he wants is to skate by in school, avoid fieldwork, and keep a low profile. But avoiding his fears isn't as easy as he hopes, especially when the school decides to send him and his best friend to hunt down a dangerous criminal. And as if that isn't bad enough, it turns out he also has to pass a flying test if he wants to make it through the school year, even though his debilitating fear of heights means it's pretty much impossible. In order to pass the test and catch a criminal, Damien accepts help from unlikely allies. But when his mission goes south and he accidentally lets a terrible weapon fall into the wrong hands, he'll have to overcome his doubts and save his friends from a psychotic killer bent on using his worst fears against him."--Provided by publisher.

Our Guardian Renegade is the first novel of a 16 years old Harley Zed Mona. It is a fast-paced, cinematically driven read, which draws a cast of vivid characters, unique and fascinating stories of intertwined fates, and it delves deep into themes of society, race, gender, and sexuality.

Sixteen-year-old Damien Locke has a plan: major in messing with people at the local supervillain university and become a professional evil genius, just like his supervillain mom. But when he discovers the shameful secret she's been hiding all these years, that the one-night stand that spawned him was actually with a superhero, everything gets messed up. His father's too moral for his own good, so when he finds out Damien exists, he actually wants him to come live with him and his goody-goody superhero family. Damien gets shipped off to stay with them in their suburban hellhole, and he has only six weeks to prove he's not a hero in any way, or else he's stuck living with them for the rest of his life, or until he turns eighteen, whichever comes first. To get out of this mess, Damien has to survive his dad's "flying lessons" that involve throwing him off the tallest building in the city--despite his nearly debilitating fear of heights--thwarting the eccentric teen scientist who insists she's his sidekick, and keeping his supervillain girlfriend from finding out the truth. But when Damien uncovers a dastardly plot to turn all the superheroes into mindless zombie slaves, a plan hatched by his own mom, he discovers he cares about his new family more than he thought. Now he has to choose: go back to his life of villainy and let his family become zombies, or stand up to his mom and become a real hero.

Can a half villain ever be a full hero? Damien Locke didn't choose for his supervillain mom to disown him - just because he sort of defied her and ruined her evil plans to take over Golden City - and he didn't choose for his superpower to be flying, a superhero ability that involves his least favorite thing: heights. But now that he's living with his dad's superhero family and enrolling at Heroesworth Academy, he's ready to embrace his new life, get his H, and finally belong somewhere. But belonging isn't as easy as signing up for classes, and Damien finds himself struggling to fit in more than ever. Just when he's sure his fate as a hero has been decided, though, he gets a new villain power that he can't control. And things only get worse when he accidentally screws up one of his sidekick Sarah's gadgets, altering her personality and turning her into a crazed, anti-supervillain vigilante - leaving him no choice but to team up with her annoying superhero boyfriend if he hopes to have any chance of getting the old Sarah back, before she captures - or kills - another supervillain like him.

As the Third World War rages on, America is confronted by Soviet spies and American traitors. In this shadowy world of uncertain alliances, the Roadhouse Sons must distinguish between friend, foe and a serial killer.