Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2021 - Antihero's and Villains as the protagonist
- Mahogany S.
- Thursday, April 01, 2021
Collection
Do you believe there's always an "other" side to each story? Well here they are. Read some titles that talk about the perspective of the villain or an antihero. Some are tricksters and some are downright murderers. All are darkly enjoyable.
Learn more about the Broader Bookshelf challenge and see more lists here.
Superhero Universe
Published in 2016
Superheroes! Supervillains! Superpowered antiheroes. Mad scientist. Adventureres into the unknown. Detectives of the dark night. Costumed crimefighters. Steampunk armoured avengers. Brave and bold supergroups. Crusading aliens in a stange land. Secret histories. Pulp action. Superhero Univers (Tesseracts Nineteen) features all of these permutations of the superhero genre and many others besides!
The Widow
Published in 2016
"Following the twists and turns of an unimaginable crime, The Widow is an electrifying debut thriller that will take you into the dark spaces that exist between a husband and a wife. When the police started asking questions, Jean Taylor turned into a different woman. One who enabled her and her husband to carry on when more bad things began to happen. . . But that woman's husband died last week. And Jean doesn't have to be her anymore. There's a lot Jean hasn't said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was too busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with the accusing glares and the anonymous harassment. Now there's no reason to stay quiet. There are people who want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them that there were secrets. There always are in a marriage. The truth--that's all anyone wants. But the one lesson Jean has learned in the last few years is that she can make people believe anything. . ."-- Provided by publisher.
Who's on Worst?
The Lousiest Players, Biggest Cheaters, Saddest Goats and Other Antiheroes in Baseball History
Published in 2013
"A hilarious celebration of the worst in baseball history: The boneheads, cheats, jerks and losers who make the grand old game so fun. From a delightful survey of batters who fell below the dreaded "Mendoza Line" to a rundown of managers who had long careers distinguished by relentless losing to a roster of players who took steroids but still stunk, Who's on Worst? is a thoroughly entertaining portrait of the personalities who deserve their place in baseball history as much as the immortals"-- Provided by publisher.
Wuthering Heights
Published in 2011
This is the story of the savage, tormented foundling Heathcliff, who falls wildly in love with Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of his benefactor, and the violence and misery that result from their thwarted longing for each other. A book of great power and strength, it is filled with the raw beauty of the moors and an uncanny understanding of the terrible truths about men and women. It is an understanding made even more extraordinary by the fact that it came from the heart of a woman who lived most of her brief life in the remote wildness of the moors.
A Clockwork Orange
Published in 1995
Presents Burgess' satire of the present inhumanity of man to man through a futuristic culture where teenagers rule with violence, and includes the final chapter deleted from the first American edition.
And then There Were None
Published in 2011
A killer stalks a group of ten total strangers on an isolated island off the Devon coast, in a suspenseful story of murder and retribution set to a sinister nursery rhyme.
The Prague Cemetery
Published in 2011
"19th-century Europe--from Turin to Prague to Paris--abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. In Italy, republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. In France, during the Paris Commune, people eat mice, plan bombings and rebellions in the streets, and celebrate Black Masses. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating conspiracies and even massacres. There are false beards, false lawyers, false wills, even false deaths. From the Dreyfus Affair to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Jews are blamed for everything. One man connects each of these threads into a massive crazy-quilt conspiracy within conspiracies. Here, he confesses all, thanks to Umberto Eco's ingenious imagination--a thrill-ride through the underbelly of actual, world-shattering events. "-- Provided by publisher.
American Psycho
Published in 1991
In a black satire of the eighties, a decade of naked greed and unparalleled callousness, a successful Wall Street yuppie cannot get enough of anything, including murder. Now a major motion picture from Lion's Gate Films, released Spring 2000, starring Christian Bale (Metroland), Chloe Sevigny (The Last Days of Disco), Jared Leto (My So Called Life), and Reese Witherspoon (Cruel Intentions), and directed by Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol). In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day, while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
Gone Girl
A Novel
Published in 2012
On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick's wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren't his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?
The Collector
Published in 1997
Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins a betting pool, he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time. Alone and desperate, Miranda must struggle to overcome her own prejudices and contempt if she is understand her captor, and so gain her freedom.
Good Omens
The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Published in 2006
The world is going to end next Saturday, but there are a few problems--the Antichrist has been misplaced, the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse ride motorcycles, and the representatives from heaven and hell decide that they like the human race.
Grendel
Published in 1989
The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic BEOWULF, tells his side of the story.
The Queen's Fool
A Novel
Published in 2004
In 1553, Hannah Green, a young Jewish girl, flees to London to escape the Spanish Inquisition and catches the attention of Robert Dudley, who plans to use her talents for observation and second sight.
Hard Light
A Cass Neary Crime Novel
Published in 2016
"As her passionately devoted fans know, Elizabeth Hand is a uniquely gifted storyteller. Her iconoclastic series of crime novels which features offbeat photographer Cass Neary, began with the underground classic Generation Loss, and that was followed by the brilliant Available Dark. Katherine Dunne, author of Geek Love, describes Cass as "one of literature's great noir antiheroes," and comparisons to Stieg Larsson's Liz Salander abound. As the story opens, Cass arrives in London where she meets and is reunited with her long-lost lover, Quinn O'Boyle, who is wanted by both Interpol and the Russian mob. When Quinn then fails to show at their rendezvous point, Cass is fearful she'll be the next to disappear, and she goes on the run"-- Provided by publisher.
World, Chase Me Down
A Novel
Published in 2017
"A rousing, suspenseful debut novel--True Grit meets Catch Me If You Can--based on the forgotten true story of a Robin Hood of the American frontier who pulls off the first successful kidnapping for ransom in U.S. history. Once the most wanted man in America, Pat Crowe is a forgotten folk hero who captivated the nation as an outlaw for economic justice. World, Chase Me Down resurrects him, telling the electrifying story of the first great crime of the last century: how in 1900 the out-of-work former butcher kidnapped the teenage son of Omaha's wealthiest meatpacking tycoon for a ransom of $25,000 in gold, and then burgled, safe-cracked, and bond-jumped his way across the country and beyond, inciting a manhunt that was dubbed "the thrill of the nation" and a showdown in the court of public opinion between the haves and have-nots--all the while plotting a return to the woman he never stopped loving. As if channeling Mark Twain and Charles Portis, Andrew Hilleman has given us a character who is bawdy and soulful, grizzled, salty, and hard-drinking, and with a voice as unforgettable as that of Lucy Marsden in Alan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All--an anti-hero you can't help rooting for"-- Provided by publisher.
Assassin's Apprentice
Published in 1995
Fitz, Prince Chivalry's illegitimate son raised by Burrich the stableman, is ignored by all the royalty except for King Shrewd, who has him tutored as an assassin because he has the magic Skill.
Alias Hook
Published in 2014
""Every child knows how the story ends. The wicked pirate captain is flung overboard, caught in the jaws of the monster crocodile who drags him down to a watery grave. But it was not yet my time to die. It's my fate to be trapped here forever, in a nightmare of childhood fancy, with that infernal, eternal boy." Meet Captain James Benjamin Hook, a witty, educated Restoration-era privateer cursed to play villain to a pack of malicious little boys in a pointless war that never ends. But everything changes when Stella Parrish, a forbidden grown woman, dreams her way to the Neverland in defiance of Pan's rules. From the glamour of the Fairy Revels, to the secret ceremonies of the First Tribes, to the mysterious underwater temple beneath the Mermaid Lagoon, the magical forces of the Neverland open up for Stella as they never have for Hook. And in the pirate captain himself, she begins to see someone far more complex than the storybook villain. With Stella's knowledge of folk and fairy tales, she might be Hook's last chance for redemption and release if they can break his curse before Pan and his warrior boys hunt her down and drag Hook back to their neverending game, in this beautifully and romantically written adult fairy tale perfect for fans of Gregory Maguire and Paula Brackston"-- Provided by publisher.
Darth Bane
Dynasty of Evil
Published in 2009
Determined that the Sith dream of galactic domination will not die with him, Bane vows to learn the secret of a forgotten Dark Lord that will assure the Sith's immortality-and his own. But when Bane suddenly vanishes, his apprentice Zannah must find him--possibly even rescue him--before she can kill him.
The Book of the Unknown
Tales of the Thirty-six
Published in 2009
Contains twelve short stories that describe twelve unlikely saints, featuring "Alef the Idiot," "Gimmel the Gambler," "Zayin the Profane," "Chet the Cheat," and others.
You
A Novel
Published in 2014
"Love hurts... When aspiring writer Guinevere Beck strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe works, he's instantly smitten. Beck is everything Joe has ever wanted: She's gorgeous, tough, razor-smart, and as sexy as his wildest dreams. Beck doesn't know it yet, but she's perfect for him, and soon she can't resist her feelings for a guy who seems custom made for her. But there's more to Joe than Beck realizes, and much more to Beck than her oh-so-perfect facade. Their mutual obsession quickly spirals into a whirlwind of deadly consequences. A chilling account of unrelenting passion, Caroline Kepnes's You is a perversely romantic thriller that's more dangerously clever than any you've read before"-- Provided by publisher.
I Wear the Black Hat
Grappling with Villians (real and Imagined)
Published in 2013
The cultural critic questions how modern people understand the concept of villainy, describing how his youthful idealism gave way to an adult sympathy with notorious cultural figures to offer insight into the appeal of anti-heroes.
The Monk
Published in 2008
Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, this is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest. The struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions tempts its main character into breaking his vows.
Darkly Dreaming Dexter
A Novel
Published in 2006
Hiding a secret life as an assassin while working as a murder analyst for the Miami police, Dexter Morgan is intrigued by the work of a new serial killer whose style mimics his own.
Adam's Rib
Published in 2016
"Six months after being exiled from his beloved Rome, Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone has settled into a routine in the cold, quiet, chronically backward alpine town of Aosta: an espresso at home, breakfast in the piazza, and a morning joint in his office. A little self-medication helps Rocco deal with the morons that almost exclusively comprise the local force. Especially on a day like today. It's his girlfriend's birthday (if you could call her that; in his mind, Rocco's only faithful to his late wife), he has no gift--and he's about to stumble upon a corpse. It begins when a maid reports a burglary in Aosta. But there's no sign of forced entry, and after Rocco picks the lock, he notices something off about the carefully ransacked rooms. That's when he finds the body: a woman, the maid's employer, left hanging after a grisly suicide. Or is it? Rocco's intuition tells him the scene has been staged. In other words, it's murder--a pain in the ass of the highest order."--Syndetics.
Gone with the Wind
Published in 2011
The turbulent romance of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler is shaped by the ravages of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
The Possessions
A Novel
Published in 2017
"[A] young woman who channels the dead for a living crosses a dangerous line when she falls in love with one of her clients, whose wife died under mysterious circumstances" -- provided by publisher.
Lolita
Published in 1989
A novel that studies the moral disintegration of a man whose obsessive desire to possess his step-daughter destroys the lives of those around him
The Hound of the D'Urbervilles
Published in 2011
Presents the adventures of Professor Moriarty and his partner Colonel Sebastian 'Basher' Moran as they solve crimes for profit.
Fight Club
Published in 1996
The rise of a terrorist organization, led by a waiter who enjoys spitting in people's soup. He starts a fighting club, where men bash each other, and the club quickly gains in popularity. It becomes the springboard for a movement devoted to destruction for destruction's sake.
Madame Serpent
A Catherine De' Medici Novel
Published in 2012
A fictional account of Catherine de' Medici, the fourteen-year-old reluctant Italian bride to the second son of the King of France, Henry, during the sixteenth-century.
Knife Edge
Published in 2005
"The setting is fifties Malaya and Singapore, at the height of the new terrorist attempts to subvert the creation of the new federation. The Royal Marines, the Commandoes, were used in coastal and jungle operations at a time when it was said that the post-war promise of a stable and successful Malaya was on a knife-edge. There are Blackwoods in this story - a senior officer and a ranker!"--Fantastic fiction.
The Annotated Frankenstein
Published in 2012
A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator, in an annotated edition that offers insights into Shelley's literary and social worlds.
The Hunter
Published in 2014
'The Hunter' is the story of a man who hits New York head-on, like a shotgun blast to the chest. Betrayed by the woman he loves and double-crossed by his partner in crime, Parker makes his way cross-country with only one thought burning in his mind - to coldly exact his revenge and reclaim what was taken from him!
The Kind Worth Killing
A Novel
Published in 2015
"A dark and devious literary suspense novel about a random encounter, sex, and a conversation that quickly turns to murder--a modern reimagining of Patricia Highsmith's classic Strangers on a Train--from the author of The Girl with a Clock for a Heart"-- Provided by publisher.
Hench
A Novel
Published in 2020
Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. As a temp, she's just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called 'hero' leaves her badly injured. So, of course, then she gets laid off. With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks. Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it.
Artemis
A Novel
Published in 2017
Augmenting her limited income by smuggling contraband to survive on the Moon's wealthy city of Artemis, Jazz agrees to commit what seems to be a perfect, lucrative crime, only to find herself embroiled in a conspiracy for control of the city.
I Am Not a Serial Killer
Published in 2010
John Wayne Cheever keeps his obsession with serial killers in check by a set of rigid rules that he lives by, hoping to the prevent himself from committing murder, but when a body turns up behind a laundromat, John must confront a danger outside himself.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Published in 1998
The author's classic novel about the Faust myth, in which a young dandy trades his soul for eternal youth.