Starter Villain - John Scalzi

Now a New York Times bestseller!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. Jake had enemies, and now they''re coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital. It''s up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.