Lee Bacon Books In Order

Publication Order of Joshua Dread Books

Publication Order of Legendtopia Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Audiobooks Only Books

Lee Bacon is an American bestselling author of children books popularly known for his Joshua Dread children books. He was born and raised in Texas and later went to Pace University where he attended a master’s program in publishing. He started writing children book during his two years stay in Munich, Germany. His Joshua Dread series featuring superheroes and supervillains was nominated for a Nutmeg Award in 2015. The series was also picked by Texas Library Association for the Spirit of Texas Reading Program. It has been translated into German, Spanish, and French.

Dread Star

Dread Star, the first book in Lee Bacon series introduces us to the main character, Joshua Dread. To everyone around him, he was an ordinary kid in the block with ordinary parents. His mother was a horticulture lecturer at a local college while his father was a stay at home inventor. Unknown to everyone, Joshua’s mom and dad were two of the most wicked supervillains in the world. Popularly known as Dread Duo, the super villain’s couple was constantly planning to destroy the world. Previously, they had unleashed an army of walking dead in Washington, D.C, and they had even tried to vaporize California. Their most recent evil activity is that they had managed to influence global weather pattern to create massive floods.

While his mother and father are making their evil schemes at home, Joshua is at school trying to navigate through the sixth grade. Life takes a twisted turn for him when he comes to realize that he has a gift of spontaneous combustion. In other words, it is able to make stuff blow up. His parents are happy about his newly found powers, but Joshua is not convinced that he wants to be a supervillain like his parents. To complicate matters further, Joshua becomes good friends at a school with Sophie Smith, and she is gifted as him. It turns out that Sophie is the child of Captain Justice, a famous world superhero, and the archenemy of Joshua’s parents. As a rule of thumb, superhero kids are not supposed to interact with villain kids, and when they do so, someone gets hurt. However, Joshua, Sophie, and their friend Milton embark on an epic that ultimately unites the two families. If you examine closely, villains and superheroes have a lot in common, and it makes sense for them to socialize after work hours.

Joshua Dread is the first novel in Lee Bacon’s series, and it’s funny from the first paragraph to the last and never begs to be put down. Joshua is a wonderful kid, and their parents are an interesting pair of criminals. They can walk the line between unrepentant evil masterminds and doting parents. Captain Justice is an interesting character too. He is a media whore and a sycophant who pays his mortgage with an endless list of endorsement deals. He is an entertaining character too. At crime scenes, Captain Justice, he recites his well-rehearsed clichés while using his arsenal of weapons and never forgets to kiss babies and sign autographs.

The Nameless Hero

After surviving a brutal attack from a librarian on the last day of his sixth grade, our gifted hero Joshua is finally looking for some peace and quiet time during the summer vacation and wants to spend two months of doing nothing. But instead of spending their vacation watching cartoon network and sleeping till noon, Joshua and his friends are recruited to attend a summer camp for the gifted children, a camp whose main purpose is to groom the next generation of superheroes.

But Joshua is confused. Even though he possesses the ability to cause spontaneous combustion, he is not a superhero. His parents are some of the world known supervillains. To Joshua’s surprise, his parents accept the invitation, and his mom informs him that the summer camp will make him realize his future potential as a super villain. Half-heartedly, Joshua packs his bags and joins his friends for the superhero summer camp.

The Dominion Key

It’s almost the end of the summer and the start of school nearing when Phineas Vex’s goons attack Joshua and his friends Milton, Miranda, and Sophie in a local mall. The attack is troubling to Sophia and Joshua’s parents, and the parents decide for their safety, the kids have to be sent to Alabaster Academy- a school located in a remote island for gifted students.

Joshua and his friends now included a new friend named Cassie, the principal’s daughter, come to a shocking discovery. The find out that Phineas is trying to collect the pieces of a device that could give him the power to control the entire world. The last missing piece of the device is something known as the Dominion Key. They also learn that the key was made by a teacher at the new Academy school. Dr. Fleming, the teacher who produced the key, lets them in on a secret, one that none of them wanted to find out.

Like the first and the second book in the series, The Dominion Key moves along quickly grabbing the reader’s attention from the first page to the last. It’s pretty clear that something major has happened in the first and the second novel in the series and all the characters involved mention and respond to it. Joshua Dread is a series that would appeal to many of middle school students as it contains all the ingredients: students with special powers, superheroes, and epic adventures that put the superheroes and the students lives on the line. The author does a wonderful job in crafting superheroes and supervillains that young readers will have an easier time connecting with. If you’re looking for a superhero books for your school going kids, it’s recommended you try Lee Bacon’s Joshua Dread series while each book in the series can be read as a standalone, it’s highly recommended to read them in publication order to get a better understanding of some of the events in the previous books.