In post-NK3 Los Angeles, a sixty-foot-tall fence surrounds the hills where the rich used to live, but the mansions have been taken over by those with the only power that matters: the power of memory. Life for the community inside the Fence, ruled over by the new aristocracy, the Verified, is a perpetual party. Outside the Fence, in downtown Los Angeles, the Verified use an invented mythology to control the mindless and nameless Drifters, Shamblers, and Bottle Bangers who serve the gift economy until no longer needed.
The ruler, Chief, takes his guidance from gigantic effigies of a man and a woman in the heart of the Fence. They warn him of trouble to come, but who is the person to watch? Is it the elusive Eckmann, holed up with the last functioning plane at LAX; Shannon Squier, the chisel-wielding pop superstar from the pre-NK3 world, pulled from the shambling masses; a treacherous member of Chiefs inner circle; or Hopper, the uncommon Drifter compelled by an inner voice to search for a wife whose name and face he doesnt know? Each threatens to upset the delicate power balance in this fragile world.
In deliciously dark prose, Tolkin winds a noose-like plot around this melee of despots, prophets, and rebels as they struggle for command and survival in a town that still manages to exert a magnetic force, even as a ruined husk.
The definitive novel of today’s Silicon Valley, After On flash-captures our cultural and technological moment with up-to-the-instant savvy. Matters of privacy and government intrusion, post-Tinder romance, nihilistic terrorism, artificial cons...
Jennifer Government is Here to Help!In Max Barry’s twisted, hilarious vision of the near future, the world is run by giant American corporations (except for a few deluded holdouts like the French); taxes are illegal; employees take the last na...
Narrator: Michael Kramer,Patrick Frederic Published: 01/21/2003
Johannes Cabal, a brilliant scientist and notorious snob, is single-mindedly obsessed in heart and soul with raising the dead. Well, perhaps not soul . . . He hastily sold his years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. But now, tormented by...
Narrator: Christopher Cazenove Published: 07/07/2009
Bret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is the bestselling writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed he found himself adrift in a world of weal...
Narrator: James Van Der Beek Published: 08/16/2005
A wickedly satirical and outrageous thriller about globalization and marketing hype, Jennifer Government is the best novel in the world ever."Funny and clever.... A kind of ad-world version of Dr. Strangelove.... [Barry] unleashes enough w...
Narrator: Michael Kramer,Patrick Frederic Published: 10/17/2002
BEAUTIFUL YOU is Palahniuk's much-anticipated satire of the emerging erotic thriller genre, a mash-up of mommy porn and chick lit ala Sex and the City, and fantasy lit ala Clan of the Cave Bear. Imagine if Ira Levin had a baby with Jean Auel.
Violet Parry is living the quintessential life of luxury in the Hollywood Hills with David, her rock-and-roll manager husband, and her darling toddler, Dot. She has the perfect life--except that she's deeply unhappy. David expects the world of Viol...
Outraged over the mounting Social Security debt, Cassandra Devine, a charismatic 29-year-old blogger and member of Generation Whatever, incites massive cultural warfare when she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to ...
HE'S BACK AND HE'S FUHRIOUS!"Desperately funny . . . An ingenious comedy of errors." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times"Satire at its best." --Newsweek"Thrillingly transgressive." --The GuardianA NEW YORK TIMES SUMMER READING PICKIn this record-bre...
