8 Book Recommendations for Our Favorite Avengers

Captain America/Steve Rogers
Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon
You can’t convince me the good Captain doesn’t like curling up with a sweeping love story at the end of the day, and the Outlander series provides that in spades. He’ll also identify with the protagonist, a nurse from his own original World War II era who accidentally steps through time to 18th-century Scotland, and likely will find her attempts to acclimate to her new environment both absorbing and familiar. Even better, he’ll be able to enjoy the Outlander television series from Battlestar Galactica‘s Ronald D. Moore—maybe he and Agent 13 can have viewing parties?

Iron Man/Tony Stark
The Wicked + The Divine, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
Tony Stark lives a fast-paced, glamorous sort of life, and so he needs a fast-paced, glamorous sort of read for when he’s hanging out on the corporate jet. Enter The Wicked + The Divine, one of the buzzier comic titles of the last year, best described as being about rockstar gods who incarnate/merge with humans every ninety years, then die two years later. Filled with razor-sharp dialogue, stylish pop art, and the occasional bit of gruesome violence, this is sure to please Stark—who, let’s face it, is pretty sure he’s a rockstar god himself.

Thor
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Thor is going to have many thoughts when he’s done with Gaiman’s hugely popular road-trip novel about new and old gods struggling for power across America—probably mostly about what the author got wrong, which he’ll detail in a lengthy and verbose letter to Mr. Gaiman himself. And then for the next month he’ll be horrible at parties, because he’ll buttonhole people to ask if they’ve read the book and then explain to them, whether they’ve read it or not, exactly how the characters of Odin and Loki diverge from the originals. But listen, he was always going to read it, and it’s better to get it out of the way sooner rather than later.

Hawkeye/Clint Barton
The Outlaws of Sherwood, by Robin McKinley
Hawkeye enjoyed The Hunger Games so much we thought we’d suggest another story about a famous archer, this time McKinley’s excellent retelling of the Robin Hood story. Of course, he fancies himself a bit of an Everyman hero as well, which makes Outlaws right up his alley: when Robin is forced to go into hiding, he and his friends (including several awesome female characters either not present or sadly undersold in the original tale) find themselves drawn into a resistance movement opposing the greedy and corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham. Maybe once Hawkeye’s done with that he can move on to yet another important archer: a certain Green Arrow.

Black Widow/Natalia Romanova, aka Natasha Romanoff
Eugene Onegin: And Other Poems, by Alexander Pushkin
Natasha doesn’t have a lot of time for reading, but when she does, she likes to make it count. In honesty, most of her reading material consists of things like stolen top-secret documents and weapon manuals, but she also has a soft spot for the man frequently referred to as the Russian Shakespeare: Alexander Pushkin. With this in mind, we think she’ll enjoy this collection of his poetry, centering around Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse and one of Pushkin’s most famous works.

Bruce Banner/Hulk
The Color of Magic, by Terry Pratchett
With his passion for science, wry sense of humor, and very serious need for diverting and uplifting entertainment (you saw what happened in the last movie—dude needs some fun reading), Bruce seems like a perfect match for Sir Terry’s works, so you can imagine our surprise when we learned he has not yet been introduced to them. The Color of Magic is a good place to start for those wanting to enter the Discworld series: it’s the first book Pratchett wrote in it, and introduces us to the inept wizard Rincewind, a man so bad at magic he’s referred to as “the magical equivalent to the number zero.”
What books would you recommend to the Avengers?