Growing up, I loved discovering how things work. That led me to a career in engineering, but I never left a certain quirkiness behind. Why else would I have raised llamas for thirty years? Or loved the stories I find in science fiction? Especially books that start in a real place occupied by believable people, then demand a leap of faith, a reach beyond what's known today. We have so much to learn – about planets and people – that possibilities spiral out into the universe. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I have.
You and I may already have one foot in this near-future world with its chilling look inside the warehouse of a retail giant: Amaz… uh, Cloud. The company is named Cloud. Can powerful bosses possibly be benign overlords? Is a miserable existence good enough in a wretched world? Hmm, maybe not.
I loved the characters – a reluctant hero and a cold-blooded spy who join forces as an unlikely couple searching for the truth behind a colossal global company. I never guessed the ending, and that's always a plus.
Cloud isn’t just a place to work. It’s a place to live. And when you’re here, you’ll never want to leave.
“A thrilling story of corporate espionage at the highest level . . . and a powerful cautionary tale about technology, runaway capitalism, and the nightmare world we are making for ourselves.”—Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter
Film rights sold to Imagine Entertainment for director Ron Howard! • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Financial Times • Real Simple • Kirkus Reviews
Paxton never thought he’d be working for Cloud, the giant…
From early on, I found myself captivated by the concept of a dystopic future for humanity. Years later, a 20+ year police career cemented the notion that people are not inherently good and that if a dystopic future is at all possible–we as a species will make it a reality. My love of science fiction, especially all forms of dystopia, combined with a hard-earned street-level grit and a love of action. Whether writing solo or with my amazing co-author, Dr. Gareth Worthington, I often inject these elements into my stories. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I did!
I don’t think cyberpunk as we know it would exist without William Gibson’s Neuromancer. If PKD jump-started the genre, then Gibson advanced it in ways previously unimaginable.
I love the tone and texture of this book. Written in a gritty urban style, the mixture of atmosphere and wacky characters vividly paints the concept of high-tech and low-life that underpins the cyberpunk genre. Plus, it has “street samurai”–I mean, let’s go!
The book that defined the cyberpunk movement, inspiring everything from The Matrix to Cyberpunk 2077.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, and lit the fuse on the Cyberpunk movement.
More than three decades later, Gibson's text is as stylish as ever, his noir narrative still glitters like chrome in the shadows and his depictions of…
I’m a multi-genre writer who loves hearing the characters’ voices and getting their stories out there in the world. A lot of my characters are shaped by their gifts, whether they have supernatural ones or not. The things that happen to them shape who they are and how they react to future events. I exist on sarcasm, sass, and hot tea, so many of my characters do too.
It’s been a while since I read this book, but I remember thinking every place described felt real. It hits all the right notes of thriller with a fallible yet strong heroine who gets the job done, sometimes at great personal cost. Michael is as close to a shapeshifter as normal humans can be. She can become anybody. (Content warning – contains strong language)
Governments pay her. Criminals fear her. Nobody sees her coming.
Vanessa “Michael” Munroe deals in information—expensive information—working for corporations, heads of state, private clients, and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. Born to missionary parents in lawless central Africa, Munroe took up with an infamous gunrunner and his mercenary crew when she was just fourteen. As his protégé, she earned the respect of the jungle's most dangerous men, cultivating her own reputation for years until something sent her running. After almost a decade building a new life and lucrative career from her home base in…
I’m absolutely passionate about suspense stories, especially ones with killer twists. Maybe it’s all the crime shows I watch, but the motives for crimes are so wide and varied, and I love when the unexpected is explored in fiction. I’m also intrigued by stories about missing people and the myriad of reasons behind why they go missing–especially when things aren’t always what they seem. Whether it’s the missing who return years later or hints of them suddenly appear, I can’t help but get wrapped up in a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat guessing what might happen next! I try for great twists in my novels.
I picked this book up because it was super cheap in hardcover. It had an interesting premise with a suspense set in the business world between two competing companies. Not typically my thing, but I gave it a chance because of the price. Once I started to read it, Joseph Finder became one of my favorite authors. I could not put this down and read it in three days. It had me on the edge of my seat as the main character has to infiltrate another company, and OMG, the twist at the end! I loved this book so much that I decided to attend the Thrillerfest conference in Phoenix that year because Joseph Finder would be there. Yep, that’s how much I loved the book. I met him and gushed like a fool!
From the writer whose novels have been called "thrilling" (New York Times) and "dazzling" (USA Today) comes an electrifying novel, Joseph Finder's Paranoia, a roller-coaster ride of suspense that will hold the reader hostage until the final, astonishing twist.
Now a major motion-picture starring Harrison Ford, Liam Hemsworth, and Gary Oldman.
Adam Cassidy is twenty-six and a low-level employee at a high-tech corporation who hates his job. When he manipulates the system to do something nice for a friend, he finds himself charged with a crime. Corporate Security gives him a choice: prison - or become a spy in the…
My life has always been intertwined with plants. As a kid I would explore the old cemetery behind our back garden, where I would climb trees and swing from branches, pretending I was in the rainforest. I amassed quite a collection of natural history books too. I’d pore over them, memorise the names of the plants they contained, and copy the pictures, scribble them all down on paper; I think I always knew I would write and illustrate books myself one day. Today, as a botanist, I am fortunate to see beautiful plants in their natural habitats all around the world. I seek to capture the beauty I see in words.
This little book is a thing of beauty and I just find it spell-binding. Talented artist and printmaker Pia Östlund describes how she makes a curious discovery: a set of prints in the library of Chelsea Physic Garden in London. This leads her to rediscover the lost technique of nature-printing, while her co-author Simon Prett explores the history of this little-known art. Little snippets about fern hunting and facsimiles of fern fronds and seaweeds make this irresistible – the kind of book I’d dip into on a lazy Saturday morning over coffee, then struggle to dip back out of!
I'm a career editor living in the place I love most in the world, Australia's federal capital, Canberra. It's a small city encircled by mountains and populated with so many trees it's affectionately known as The Bush Capital. I love reading most genres but contemporary suspense intrigue above all. I know these books generally fall under the larger Thriller genre but I often feel that's a misnomer, and I think that applies to my novels. I love the range of stories this genre encompasses: it can take you anywhere in the world, into any situation, and follow any type of person as they attempt to come to grips with, and usually right, the wrongs of the world.
Dorothy Dunnett is my all-time favourite author. In her lifetime she wrote the most amazing historical fiction (two series and one stand-alone novel) but she also wrote a contemporary suspense intrigue series featuring the same hero tackling new situations in each one: The Johnson Johnson series. Why do I love her writing? For several reasons. The stories are convoluted and gripping, requiring 100% of your attention, the language is beautiful and transports you, the research she did was phenomenal and her wit was razor sharp. She has a fanatical global fanbase that I'm part of.
In Morocco with her pushy and eccentric mother, Wendy Helman, upwardly mobile Executive Secretary, finds herself at the centre of kidnappings, explosions, murders and vintage car chases across the High Atlas from Marrakesh to Taroudant.
In my life, I have always loved visiting the unsung places: villages rather than cities, places where I am the only tourist. In both reading and writing, I’m drawn to the quietly dramatic times, the moments before important events, or the aftermaths. I want to see how real characters live in real places dealing with real problems, even if all three are invented. I spent most of my childhood getting lost in books, emerging only long enough to return to the library to discover more places and times where I could snuggle between the covers of a story. As a writer, I hope I can do this for other readers.
William Gibson, “The Father of Cyberpunk,” is responsible for much of our current technology.
In Pattern Recognition, however, Gibson isn’t writing about a future decades away, but just a hint ahead, enough for us to think that the future may well be more intriguing than the present—and to understand its deep roots in the past. Through Cayce Pollard, with her allergy to bad branding, Gibson navigates the brittle edge of fashionable London, weaving in a dark documentary in Russia, a series of film stills rising like fish to the surface of the internet, and a father lost in the aftermath of 9/11.
Part mystery, part coolness commentary, and stunningly well-written, this book will have you blinking when you wake from the dream Gibson has created.
'Part-detective story, part-cultural snapshot . . . all bound by Gibson's pin-sharp prose' Arena
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THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE BLUE ANT TRILIOGY - READ ZERO HISTORY AND SPOOK COUNTRY FOR MORE
Cayce Pollard has a new job. She's been offered a special project: track down the makers of an addictive online film that's lighting up the internet. Hunting the source will take her to Tokyo and Moscow and put her in the sights of Japanese hackers and Russian Mafia. She's up against those who want to control the film, to own it - who figure breaking the law is…
