Top 5 Wednesday is a GoodReads group where people discuss a different bookish topic each week.

I happened to come across this reading prompt recently and thought it could be for a Top 5 Wednesday prompt! Go to your Goodreads “want to read” bookshelf and click on “avg rating.” It should organize titles on this shelf by either ascending or descending rating. Using this feature, share five of your highest reads on your want-to-read shelf! (If the feature isn’t working, share some of the highest reads you see instead.)

This was a fun prompt and made me realize that I have over 1500 books and comics on my want-to-read shelf. These are some of the top-rated books:

1, Lexie Dunne: How to Save the World

In the third book of Lexie Dunne’s action-packed Superheroes Anonymous series, Hostage Girl returns once again to save the world.

Gail Godwin—once so famous for being kidnapped by supervillains, the media still calls her Hostage Girl—is done with superheroes and their shadowy schemes. She’s got a cute boyfriend, a great roommate, and she’s even returned to her old job. For the first time in years, life is exactly what she wants it to be.

But when a figure from her past resurfaces, he brings with him a plague that changes the game for every superhero and villain out there. Now Gail must team up with both friend and foe to help save the world she thought she had left behind.

2, Paula Guran ed. the Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016

The collection has nine novellas. I’ve read two of them elsewhere and really liked them.

3, Susan Jane Bigelow: Extrahumans

Being “The Sampler” isn’t easy. As the weakest member of the Extrahuman Union, Jill is overlooked by just about everyone. After all, no one cares about an Extrahuman who possesses every possible superpower, but can barely use any of them. Jill is a nobody, on the run and out of a job, with no home and barely any friends to her name.

To make ends meet, Jill turns back to one of her favorite jobs: stealing. When her latest job goes terribly wrong, Jill is left with a mysterious alien artifact—one that starts whispering to her, unlocks impossible powers, and shows her incredible things.

Now Jill is on a quest for answers that will take her from the high mountains of Valen to the depths of interstellar space; from a bizarre prison planet where old friends and enemies are held captive, to the roots of St. Val’s mysterious letters and decade-spanning plans. The fate of her friends, her world, a vanished alien species, and the entire Confederation will rest on Jill’s shoulders.

Extrahumans is a tale of superpowers and long-forgotten mysteries, and the fourth and final book in the critically acclaimed Extrahuman Union series.

4, Egan Brass: Esper Files

Set in London during the latter part of the 19th century. An experiment goes wrong at The Oxford Academy of Science, giving certain people extraordinary powers which turns them into ‘Espers’. An institute is set up to teach Espers how to control these power, and stop corrupt Espers from abusing theirs. Nathan and James, two agents from the Institute team up with Freya, a young Esper whose brother (gifted with the strange ability to manipulate emotions) is abducted by a ruthless Baron. The group has to fight against a dark threat to protect the fragile peace of Victorian London… And the rest of the world.

5, Chris C. Wright: Alliance

The Alliance lays the groundwork for a 6-volume science fiction series, combining both space opera and post-apocalyptic elements of Earth’s thrilling journey from dystopia to utopia to interstellar travel and space colonization, and the evolution of diverse societies—some human, some not—across the centuries, all in the shadow of a galactic menace.

There is a definite pattern here. 🙂 I really should read Superheroes Anonymous and Extrahumans. It’s rare to have 4 out of 5 ratings for the third and fourth books in a series.