Jumper

Davy Rice teleports for the first time to get away from his father mid-beating, and the book spends far less time on the discovery of the power than on what a violent, undocumented teenager actually does with it: unable to get a job without ID, he robs a bank by teleporting straight into its safe.

What follows is smaller and darker than the premise suggests. Davy tracks down his mother, who'd left the family years earlier to get away from his father, and not long after he finds her she's killed when terrorists hijack a plane she is travelling on for work. He gets the man responsible into a position to kill him and doesn't — he hands him to the authorities instead, and the book closes with Davy in counseling rather than avenged, which is nearer its real interest than the teleporting is. An NSA agent named Cox spends much of the second half hunting Davy and eventually kidnaps his girlfriend, Millie, to force him out of hiding.

This is a book about an abused kid coping badly with sudden power, told close and a little bleak. The 2008 film keeps its opening — David, Millie, the abusive father, the mother who left, the bank vault, Cox himself — and invents most of what comes after: there are no Paladins in the novel, no ancient order hunting him, no character named Roland. Read it expecting Davy's father and the hijacking to matter more to the story than anything the film added, because none of what the film added is in it.