Books with author Richard Roberts

Supervillains do not merely play hooky.True, coming back to school after a month spent fighting—and defeating—adult superheroes is a bit of a comedown for The Inscrutable Machine. When offered the chance to skip school in the most dramatic way possible, Penelope Akk can't resist. With the help of a giant spider and mysterious red goo, she builds a spaceship and flies to Jupiter.Mutant goats. Secret human colonies. A war between three alien races with humanity as the prize. Robot overlords and evil plots. Penny and her friends find all this and more on Jupiter's moons, but what they don't find are any heroes to save the day.Fortunately, they have an angry eleven-year-old and a whole lot of mad science…

Penelope Akk wants to be a superhero. She's got superhero parents. She's got the ultimate mad science power, filling her life with crazy gadgets even she doesn't understand. She has two super powered best friends. In middle school, the line between good and evil looks clear.In real life, nothing is that clear. All it takes is one hero's sidekick picking a fight, and Penny and her friends are labeled supervillains. In the process, Penny learns a hard lesson about villainy: She's good at it.Criminal masterminds, heroes in power armor, bottles of dragon blood, alien war drones, shape shifters and ghosts, no matter what the super powered world throws at her, Penny and her friends come out on top. They have to. If she can keep winning, maybe she can clear her name before her mom and dad find out.

Jon Gunnarson never meant to transform humanity. He just wanted a normal life.A life where he doesn't absorb other people's emotions, lose himself and have to live like a hermit.So he jumps at the chance to help develop a scam telepathy app because it will get him to Bhutan, where he hopes an old friend will teach him how to disconnect.Sure, he has to work with Ella, a neuroscientist he's falling in love with, and Venn, a fraudulent Marketer who's wanted by the FBI. But Jon's had a lifetime of practice at pulling away and he figures he can handle it while he learns how to manage his condition.The problem is, working with others is the least of his worries. Because Jon and Ella unwittingly trigger the onset of mass telepathy. And, as if that isn't enough, they must run for their lives when they discover a way that Venn can avoid arrest.But how will they escape someone who can read their minds?Tuning In is a well plotted story that's both mind-bendingly strange and intimately human--a continuously surprising science-fiction/ psychological thriller about our relationship with our thoughts, with each other and even reality itself.

It's summertime for supervillains!Or maybe not, because for Penelope Akk, there is still one foe she has yet to defeat: her own reputation as Bad Penny. It's been a fun ride: fighting adult heroes, going to space, and inspiring the rest of her school to open up about their own powers.Sooner or later, that ride has to end, and with school out of the way Penny is hatching a mad scheme to end it on her own terms. Will that go smoothly? Of course not. Penny's left too many unsolved problems behind her already, like ghosts, seriously crazy friends, and angry little girls from Jupiter.One by one, they'll have to be dealt with before she can do battle with herself. She'd better hurry, because her parents are closing in. Whether she confesses or not, this time they will find out her secret.

What would middle school be like if half your classmates had super powers? It's time for Penny Akk to find out. Her latest (failed) attempt to become a superhero has inspired the rest of the kids in her school to reveal their own powers.Now, all of her relationships are changing. She has a not-at-all-secret admirer, who wants to be Penny's partner almost as much as she wants to be Penny's rival. The meanest girl in school has gained super powers and lost her mind. Can Penny help her find a better one? Can she help an aging supervillain connect with his daughter, and mend the broken hearts of two of the most powerful people in the world? And in all this, where will she find time for her own supervillainous fun, or even more dangerous, to start dating?It's going to be a long, strange semester.