Super girls/women in books

I'm looking for a place here to post some books titles with stories of teen girl or woman with super strength. I think it should be posted in "Superwoman on screen and in print" but for print we just have comics and manga. Should'nt have we "books" too ?

Thanks for helping me! I can't wait to post some reference of nice books.

Just as a teaser, in one book:
Kimberly slipped on Michelle's flip-flops heading for the door. She stopped turning around for one last thing. Walking back to the dresser, she picked up the mangled door knob placing it between her hands. She pressed her hands togheter. The metal of the abused knob crunched and groaned as she flattened it to a near pancake. She looked at one hand and then the other. Not even a scratch or blister appeared on them. A bright smile appeared on her face again as she examined the door-knob now rendered useless. "Forget Peter Parker", she beamed. "I'm Clark Kent."
(reference to come!).

I remember this book I found (on a grocery store book rack of all places, back in the 70's I think) that was about Amazons living on Earth. I subsequently lost the book and have no idea of the title or author, only the content. I've never found reference to it by searching, but it was a published paperback at the time.

The POV character was a teenage boy whose girlfriend and fellow High School athlete starts to get way stronger and taller in her mid-teens. She has to stop competing as its no longer fair to the other girls, and the two of them try to cope with her rapidly increasing strength. Her tall, statuesque mother, who lives a normal life as a single mother, turns out to be an Amazon, but she's hidden this from her daughter (for good reason).

It seems the Amazon women are on Earth only to mate with men to continue the Amazon race. But because of their strength, they invariably kill any man they mate with, often in gruesome ways. A real black widow spider kind of the arrangement.

The teenage girl is one of the first Amazons to grow up on Earth as opposed to Themoscyra. She and her boyfriend (the POV character) are horrified when they learn about the mating/killing thing, and the daughter rejects her heritage and the two of them run away together, only to be tracked by the Amazons who will surely kill him if they find them.

The two teenagers-on-the-run explore things the way teenagers do, only to find that the gap between them grows as the girl becomes more and more powerful, and she's increasingly drawn to the fatal and increasingly irresistible mating instinct that comes from being an Amazon.

The tension in the story comes from the two of them remaining close friends even as she becomes less human and more dangerous all the time, and the older Amazon women closing in on them.

I don't recall how it ended, but it was an interesting premise. Would sure like to find that book again.

Shadar

Not quite related, but one of the results from searching "amazon teenager on earth", A young blonde girl is the only survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon jungle. www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gmgmz/the-wo...l-to-earth-508-v17n9 but no apparent super powers www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/author...o-fell-to-earth.html
www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17476615

and one about the Wonder Woman author Marston www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/last-amazon

Not a book, but a short story published in a science fiction anthology, probably in the 1970s. I think the title was Miss Prinks, and it was about an older woman who is given super strength and I think super vision, by a "scientist from Zanch", as recompense for accidentally making her grandfather clock go to 13 o'clock. I've never been able to find the book since.

UPDATE

Ha! I found it! Or at least a reference to it, here . The author was Gordon R. Dickson, and it was first published in 1954. Here's the brief excerpt from that website:

"When the clock struck thirteen o’clock on her apartment’s grandfather clock, Miss Prinks, every inch a lady, thought it queer. However, the very mannerly scientist from the eighty-third Zanch dimension who materialized in her living room explained it quite clearly and, on his sudden departure, made several improvements on her condition. With her condition improved, Miss Prinks, in all regards a lady, leapt out of the building, over a train, and into the atmosphere."

Here's another one I read in the 70's: Friday, by none other than Robert A. Heinlein.

In this story the girl in question is unusually strong, but not super powered. But I remember being really attracted to her.

Woodclaw wrote:

Fred9101 wrote: I'm looking for a place here to post some books titles with stories of teen girl or woman with super strength. I think it should be posted in "Superwoman on screen and in print" but for print we just have comics and manga. Should'nt have we "books" too ?

Print is meant to include books too. Unfortunately we haven' been able to collect a significant number of superwomen book references so far.

The "Superwomen on screen and in print" section doesn't have any option to make posts except in the sub forums. None of the sub forums is appropriate for discussion of books. Which is kind of a pity since there are quite a few books featuring superwomen of various sorts these days, at least if you include ebooks. The ease of publishing ebooks to at least the Amazon Kindle store has allowed tons of authors to publish books that would have never had a chance had they needed to sway a traditional publisher.

Some that I've enjoyed:

Almost anything from Niall Teasdale. His series tend to get a little same-ish after you've read a few, but they all feature women who have or eventually obtain fairly dramatic degrees of superhuman power. Not always physical power, but still power. Start with Ugly or Steel Beneath the Skin to get the series most immediately relevant to the common themes we tend to enjoy here.

The First by Kipjo K. Ewers is a story about the first and most powerful superhuman at the dawn of supers on Earth. There is a sequel, and may be a planned series, but only one sequel so far.

So Not a Hero by S. J. Delos is the story of a retired/reformed supervillainess Crushette, and her attempts to find something to do with her life in a world that has mostly neither forgotten nor forgiven her for her previous crimes. It has a sequel, which I have not read.

Good Intentions is not specifically about superwomen, but one of the major characters is a beautiful blonde angel with an extremely blunt and forceful way of dealing with the forces of Hell. Her fights include rather a lot of punching monsters into oblivion and occasionally throwing cars around. Other characters in the series are (slightly) more subtle, and there's not actually a whole lot of super angel action, since the story is much more about the merely mortal, if very heroic male main character.

The Girl Who Would Be King by Kelly Thompson is explicitly about two supergirls, their attempts to live life in a world of ordinary mortals, and their conflicts with each other. I'm pretty sure I read about the book on this very site, albeit possibly a different version of it.

jay_manus wrote: Here's another one I read in the 70's: Friday, by none other than Robert A. Heinlein.

In this story the girl in question is unusually strong, but not super powered. But I remember being really attracted to her.

Friday was quite the find when I stumbled across it many years ago. It's one of the books that formed and focused my interests in this genre. A woman who could be stronger than any man, but also wildly sexy and a secret agent/courier/assassin as well. Tough but not unhurtable. She has an amazing mind, and Heinlein did a great job of portraying her.

Genetically enhanced and made in a laboratory ("my father was a knife and my mother was a test tube") and raised in a creche with doxy training, she's one hell of a woman.

I call her Velorian 0.1 because she's what got me going down that path.

Shadar

to give a probably less known book, The Last Dancer (Tales of the Continuing Time) by Daniel Keys Moran.

More thematically similar to Friday than a super-hero story (though different in tone), the main character, Denise Castanaveras, is a genetically engineered telepath, who is also super-strong, fast, and very well trained. There are plenty of sequences detailing how much stronger she is than a normal man, how much faster and how she can go through a lot of trained men (including some cyborgs) fairly easily. Friday is better IIRC it correctly, but this is pretty good.

This is part of a series of books (The Continuing Time). The others i enjoyed but don't fit the requirements here. This is the best story and focuses on a powerful woman, though there is significant time on other characters, I really like one of the Ai's and Trent the Uncatchable. So if you JUST want strong female action, this is going to spend a lot of time on other things. Still a great read though.

If anything, this book has a LOT things crammed in it, some from the other books, but it stands on it's own, and it's a great sci fi novel with a lot of concepts. I read it before the others, and found that after I read the other books, I think it did great job of telling what you needed to know and you don't NEED To read them unless you really like the story and the characters. (Denise doesn't feature much in the others, and is a kid in Emerald Eyes.)

Similar idea, gentically enhanced human(s).. The Moreau books by S. Andrew Swann. Forests of the Night mostly stars a male genertically engineered Tiger breed, who is a private eye. A side character is a heavily modified (looks human but isn't) female Evi Isham. The second book (Emerors of the Twilght) focues on her. Some good Sci Fi. First book is a good read, and she adds some spice. The second book is about her. Not Friday, but I don't think it'll disappoint.. I haven't read them i years, but when I was thinking of the Last Dancer I remembered it and I might have to re-read these to see if they hold up.

I remember the website Julie and Friends: Stories by AK , had a decent list of recommended books to check out.

Here's a link to that page:
web.archive.org/web/20040411152806/http:...ls.org:80/books.html

I keep reading the title here as "Super girls/women in boots" and expecting a very different thread.

shadar wrote: Friday was quite the find when I stumbled across it many years ago. It's one of the books that formed and focused my interests in this genre. A woman who could be stronger than any man, but also wildly sexy and a secret agent/courier/assassin as well. Tough but not unhurtable. She has an amazing mind, and Heinlein did a great job of portraying her.

This basically is what I see as the "sweet spot" in this kind of writing, and it's hard to hit. On the one hand, we have all those peril video guys who give us "supergirls" who last about two minutes. On the other hand, we have a lot of amateur writing where the supergirl has 1,000,000,000,000 times more power in her pinky finger than the rest of the planet combined. There's not enough in the middle, where the woman is exceptional, but not a goddess.

female monsters?
www.wired.com/2017/07/geeks-guide-theodo...17_p1&CNDID=40513192

Hey, you remembered it better than I did. But yeah, it was certainly one of the formative stories in my life.

Well, there is my book, Ms. Infinity. Now on paperback:

www.amazon.com/Ms-Infinity-Earths-Greate...id=1499134890&sr=1-1

Book description:

Join Earth’s greatest hero on the adventure of a lifetime! In her daily life she’s Bonnie Boring, the petite, smart-mouthed customer service girl at The Big Box in Queens, where she laughs it up with her best friend Lisa Lin, and falls all over herself around her work crush, “Handsome” Hal Holstein. Yet she is secretly an alien refugee from a distant world, possessing many awesome powers. For years, at the insistence of her mother, she has hidden her true self. Now she is at last coming forward, in her new alter ego as the superhero Ms. Infinity. But now Bonnie’s past is haunting her, as a frightening villain from her despotic native world attacks the Earth. Bonnie is about to fly off to face her when Hal walks in on her transformation. With little time to think, she decides to bring him along, and he rides with her in her fantastic Starship Infinity. But dangers await that even Ms. Infinity is ill-prepared for. If she is to save the Earth, she will have to do the impossible. All the while, she confronts uncomfortable secrets from her past, and warms up to a budding romance. Ms. Infinity combines superhero adventure and science fiction with romance, humor, and a dash of social commentary. All this is tied together with an accessible writing style that is friendly to young adults but fun for all readers.

Hero Stats:
Ms. Infinity
Alter Ego: Bonnie Boring.
Occupation: Customer Service at a big box store (The Big Box.)
Height: (as Bonnie Boring ) 5’0” (as Ms. Infinity) 5’11” Weight (as Bonnie Boring) 110 lbs. (as Ms. Infinity) 150 lbs.
Hair: black, Eyes: brown.
Base of Operations: Queens, New York.
Known relatives: Betty Boring (mother.)
Friends/Allies: Lisa Lin (best friend,) Hal Holstein (boyfriend)
Powers: Super strength, super speed, super endurance, super intelligence, super senses, flight, shape shifting, telekinesis, limited telepathy, creating/transforming objects, invisibility, limited manipulation of time/space, ability to think and operate in multiple dimensions.
Bonnie Boring is an alien from a planet billions of light years from Earth. At the age of thirteen, Bonnie and her mother, Betty Boring, both arrived secretly on Earth as refugees, fleeing persecution from a despotic and severely patriarchal regime. Their names are adapted from their names in their native language, which does not use speech, and is imperceptible to humans.
Concerned about the consequences of an adolescent girl living amidst much weaker peers, Betty decided that Bonnie would hide her powers and live as a human. However she agreed to allow her to operate freely in private, and assured her that the day would come that she would find the appropriate use for her abilities. In the meantime, the main outlet for her powers would be the spaceship she and her mother arrived in, which they would keep on the dark side of the moon. She devoted years of her spare time to making large-scale improvements on the ship, eventually naming it “Starship Infinity.”
It was only after many years of growth, and much personal conflict, that Bonnie could operate in public with her mother’s blessing. Above all, Betty stresses the importance of respecting the people around her. She must always consider people with less power, the value of their opinions, and their contributions. Besides Betty, Bonnie’s learning was abetted by the example of her best friend Lisa Lin. Lisa was not only loyal to Bonnie, but was also unfailingly honest with her, and quite perceptive.
Using her power of shape shifting, Bonnie created the alter ego of Ms. Infinity. In creating her public persona, Bonnie was strongly influenced by the comic books that she collected voraciously. There is an element of hubris in the name “Ms. Infinity.” Though she has many superpowers, none of her abilities are truly infinite. No matter how “super” her abilities, nonetheless she has limits like anyone, and there are even some human skills where she does not particularly excel. She is also a living creature with all the basic needs, though her endurance allows her to delay them for a time. For instance, she can fly into space, however she cannot remain there indefinitely.

Dru1076 wrote: I checked out Drakon from AK's list. It's dark...but i do like the bad girls. Plenty of good scenes and a very dominating leading lady.

I'm going to check out Friday then have a look at MisterK's book. This thread reminded me of a number of books I've wanted to read but was unable to get my hands on in the past. Thanks for the tips!

Thanks to Amazon, everything imaginable is available now. But Friday's not available in Kindle. Just hard or soft cover paper things. Which are thankfully very cheap.

Shadar

I read "So Not a Hero" a little while ago, but have not read the sequel that wasn't out at the time. Overall, it is a fairly standard superhero tale that was a fun read. I have two main problems with the book. First, the author is a bit light at times on descriptions of characters, locations, and fleshing out the world that the book takes place in. The world is your typical modern world where heroes and villains exist in, but the book does not really go deep into the dynamics of these heroes and how they interact with the world. A good contrast would be how the book "Wearing the Cape" by Marion G. Harmon fleshes out his world as the main character discovers her powers and place in that world.

Second, about midway through the book there is a somewhat explicit sex scene, but nothing at levels of some stories that have appeared on this site. However, one thing that I noticed more and more after this midway point was spelling and grammatical errors popping up more regularly. While no work is perfect, I do think that the author would have benefited from some additional readings of his book before publication. It would have given him a chance to tighten the narrative a bit, flesh the world out a bit more, and cleanup some some more glaring mistakes that Microsoft Word would have caught.

Speaking of books, you should definitely check out the Wearing the Cape series by Marion G. Harmon.

lfan wrote: Chromosome S is a book that is definitely on-topic with us. Most of the commonplace tropes, but they are all tropes we like!

www.amazon.com/Chromosome-S-Solomon-Rey-..._encoding=UTF8&psc=1

ElF

I'll buy that for a dollar!

Are the protagonists only 13?