My background is in computer science, specifically artificial intelligence. As a student, I was most interested in how our knowledge of the human brain could inform AI and vice versa. As such, I read as much neuroscience and psychology as I could and spent a lot of time thinking about how our minds create reality out of our senses. I always appreciate a novel that explores the fluidity of reality.
A routine tale told in a familiar way can be comforting and satisfying.
Embers on the Wind is a different kind of thrill altogether. The story is fresh, the characters are multifaceted, and the storytelling is original. When I picked up this novel, I knew only that it was about a purportedly haunted home that had once been part of the Underground Railroad. I had no idea what I was in for or the wild ride the author would take me on.
Each character perceives reality a bit differently, and those differences make big waves. It's best to be surprised by a novel like this, so I won't say any more than that it's thought-provoking and entertaining at once.
The past and the present converge in this enthralling, serpentine tale of women connected by motherhood, slavery's legacy, and histories that span centuries.
In 1850 in Massachusetts, Whittaker House stood as a stop on the Underground Railroad. It's where two freedom seekers, Little Annie and Clementine, hid and perished. Whittaker House still stands, and Little Annie and Clementine still linger, their dreams of freedom unfulfilled.
Now a fashionably distressed vacation rental in the Berkshires, Whittaker House draws seekers of another kind: Black women who only appear to be free. Among them are Dominique, a single mother following her grand-mere's stories…
If you could buy the dream of your choice, would you? What would you dream about? How would that dream affect your reality? Would the dream, if only for a brief time, be your reality?
The Dream Peddler is a beautifully written novel that is about much more than dreams. Historical fiction set in a small town, we're immediately pulled into the lives of the townsfolk, their joys, their challenges, and, yes, their dreams.
I loved this novel as much for its character development as for its gentle probing of the nature of dreams and reality.
If someone offered you a magic elixir that could conjure any dream you wanted . . . would you take it? Traveling salesmen like Robert Owens have passed through Evie Dawson’s town before, but none of them offered anything like what he has to sell: dreams, made to order, with satisfaction guaranteed. Soon after he arrives, the community is shocked by the disappearance of Evie’s young son. The townspeople, shaken by the Dawson family’s tragedy and captivated by Robert’s subversive magic, begin to experiment with his dreams. And Evie, devastated by grief, turns to Robert for a comfort only he…
Would you like to live forever—or barring that, for a really long time? If the answer is yes, then who are you? Is the person you were last month you? If your consciousness from last month could be transferred to a clone of your body, would that clone be you?
Matthew FitzSimmons explores the reality of who we are and more in his fast-paced mystery sci-fi novel Constance.
If you’re like me, and you feel a hole in your reading life when you finish this book, the good news is that the sequel is just a click away. Enjoy!
A breakthrough in human cloning becomes one woman's waking nightmare in a mind-bending thriller by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Gibson Vaughn series.
In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it's an abomination against nature. For young Constance "Con" D'Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it's terrifying.
After a routine monthly upload of her consciousness-stored for that inevitable transition-something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic, it's eighteen months later.…
False Pregnancy, a mysterious and fascinating condition, is a topic of The End of Miracles, written by a psychiatrist who has witnessed the condition up close.
The novel examines how unfulfilled desire can meet with mental illness (or perhaps lead to mental illness) and alter our perceptions in ways that can have outsized effects on our behavior. The tale is told with great sympathy and respect for its protagonist and has no shortage of surprising twists.
International Book Awards 2016 finalist for literary fiction
The End of Miracles is a twisting, haunting story about the drastic consequences of a frustrated obsession.
A woman with a complex past wants nothing more than to become a mother, but struggles with infertility and miscarriage. She is temporarily comforted by a wish-fulfilling false pregnancy, but when reality inevitably dashes that fantasy, she falls into a depression so deep she must be hospitalized. The sometimes-turbulent environment of the psychiatry unit rattles her and makes her fear for her sanity, and she flees. Outside, she impulsively commits a startling act with harrowing…
On her 29th birthday, Kelly Holter walks through a door and into a life that barely resembles her own. And yet it is her own.
Is her reality wrong? Or are her memories wrong? Or are they both somehow correct? Part sci-fi, part thriller, all-consuming, The Other Me explores how the decisions we make influence the person we become, or don’t. The novel raises many fascinating questions and provides plenty of unexpected answers.
“Who hasn't wondered what alternate versions of their lives might look like?...As relatable as it is suspenseful cleverly exploring adulthood, identity, and shifting realities.” —Margarita Montimore, USA Today bestselling author of Oona Out of Order
An inventive page-turner about the choices we make and the ones made for us.
One minute Kelly’s a free-spirited artist in Chicago going to her best friend’s art show. The next, she opens a door and mysteriously emerges in her Michigan hometown. Suddenly her life is unrecognizable: She's got twelve years of the wrong memories in her head and she's married to Eric, a man…
Amanda Jackson and her husband Derrick long to have a baby. But Amanda’s meandering road to motherhood has strained her marriage and she finds herself keeping secrets, even from her mother and sister. Feeling adrift - and beset by the sense that she can’t trust her own mind - Amanda turns to neuroscientist Patrick Davis for answers.
Patrick understands the strange twists and turns of the human mind better than anyone. But his expertise hasn’t helped as his own homelife crumbles. Like Amanda, his brilliant wife Marissa is harboring secrets and an immense guilt. But instead of turning to Patrick, she becomes obsessed with finding a scientific theory to restore what she’s lost. As the two couples confront the fraught intersection of hope and regret, what they find could change their lives forever.
Unlike the typical tales of a flawless fighting unit, this story follows Commander Kami Trenn and her ragtag squad of mixed-race space marines.
Dog Squad fights a mysterious adversary whose presence remains shrouded in secrecy. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but will they be able to make enough of a difference?
Can they hope to uncover the enemy’s plans for galactic dominance before the Alliance falls? Maybe. If they can stop fighting each other.
Across the void formed by two galactic spiral arms, vast forces face each other.
The tenuous Alliance, sixty civilizations united only by fear of invasion, prepare to resist the encroachment of their as-yet unseen enemy, known only as the Creeps.
The Void has become a battleground. Three thousand light years across, and populated by a scattering of ten thousand ‘dark’ worlds, it is the Alliance’s last chance to protect their way of life. Self-destructive, robotic drones pour across the Void in ever-increasing numbers, testing the Alliance fleets to breaking point.
