MattMcneill's Reading List
17 stories
Apartment 239 by elfordalley
elfordalley
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Abe Barrett is surrounded by ghosts - some of them are even his roommates! But now Abe's visions show something dark coming, and it wants Abe dead. ***** When Abe Barrett's family died, he started seeing ghosts. Soon he was living with three of them, and it turns out ghosts are just as eccentric as people. Abe is bothered by the ghosts constantly since he doesn't want to solve their murders, avenge them or do much of anything. He just wants to do his job and relax. His dreams, however, have been getting darker as people in town start to disappear. Soon Abe realizes there is something hunting him, and that same threat was involved with his family's deaths. A legacy of darkness is chasing Abe Barrett, and his supernatural roommates may not be enough to save him. [[word count: 60,000-70,000 words]]
The Term Sheet | Wattys 2016 Winner by LucasCarlson
LucasCarlson
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2016 WATTY AWARD WINNER - HQ LOVE THE TERM SHEET is a fast-paced technothriller about entrepreneurship, startups, encryption, and the delicate balance between national security and individual privacy. Its complex characters explore thought-provoking questions about the role of technology in an ever-changing society. Step into the high-stakes game played by today's technology innovators, who push the envelope and risk it all. Get ready, this thrilling book gives you a taste of what startups are really like. _____________________________________________________ David Alexander, a young programmer in Portland, Oregon, loathed his job. Computer programming had always come naturally, but being an employee never suited him. So he tried entrepreneurship instead. After making a series of embarrassing blunders, David finally hit on a startup idea that stuck: encrypted chat. Sure there were alternatives, but as Edward Snowden has shown us, most of them (willingly or unwillingly) have backdoors for spies and bad guys. A new approach made David's app one of the most secure options out there, which caught the attention of many people, including Shawn Douglas from the Secret Service. Shawn Douglas worked with eight different presidents, preventing twenty assassination attempts, forty-three terrorist plots and two bullets. When he was promoted to a desk job overseeing and organizing travel, he picked up on a cryptic email thread that hinted at a threat to the President's life. In a race to unravel the conspiracy, Shawn and David both have to make some difficult decisions. Will Shawn stop the terrorists in time? Will David be able to navigate his startup out of a crisis and keep his entrepreneurial dream alive? Or will fate deal them both a crushing hand? Read the book to find out.
Goats from Lambs by PaulKingston
PaulKingston
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Headless bodies start appearing in the streets, so cunning Detective Rashida Heyes and her partner have to stop the killer to prevent the apocalypse ***** After bodies start appearing in the middle of the streets, hollowed and headless, Detective Rashida Heyes and her partner, Travis Virgil, are given the case. However, once they dig deeper, meeting the emotionally broken Victor Eccelstone, and realize how heavily the church is involved, Rashida has to acknowledge that this case might be bigger than she had ever imagined. These crimes aren't the act of one man - they're the beginning of the end of the world [[Winner of the 2017 Wattys Storysmith Award]] [[word count: 150,000-200,000 words]]
The Dragon Chase: A Tale of the Everburning City by Arveliot
Arveliot
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There is no night in the Everburning City. There can never be. ***** For four hundred years the Everburning City has withstood the advance of the life-strangling fog known as the Gloam. Its walls have held back five invasions, but on the eve of the sixth, the city's inhabitants know things have changed. Golems are coming out of the mist, and the bodies of the dead are rising at the Gloam's bidding. The city's last and most desperate line of defence comes in the form of the Crafters, individuals who can channel the power of fire, though they risk their sanity each time they do. The brightest of these valiant heroes are Tabitha a'Loria and her apprentice Gerald Reath. Risking their lives, they mount their airships, determined to save the last bastion of humanity - the Everburning City. [[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by CoryDoctorow
CoryDoctorow
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Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies...and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World. Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the keeping of a network of "ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches. Now, though, the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents, and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war...
One Day In Budapest. A Thriller. by JoannaPenn
JoannaPenn
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A relic, stolen from the heart of an ancient city. An echo of nationalist violence not seen since the dark days of the Second World War. Budapest, Hungary. When a priest is murdered at the Basilica of St Stephen and the Holy Right relic is stolen, the ultra-nationalist Eröszak party calls for retribution and anti-Semitic violence erupts in the city. Dr Morgan Sierra, psychologist and ARKANE agent, finds herself trapped inside the synagogue with Zoltan Fischer, a Hungarian Jewish security advisor. As the terrorism escalates, Morgan and Zoltan must race against time to find the Holy Right and expose the conspiracy, before blood is spilled again on the streets of Budapest. One Day In Budapest is a chilling view of a possible future as Eastern Europe embraces right-wing nationalism. A conspiracy thriller for fans of Daniel Silva, where religion and politics intersect.
Dark of Winter: Prepper Book Two by chavez243ca
chavez243ca
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Connor Killoren's journey through the apocalypse continues in this addition to the Prepper series. The foundations of a civil society continues to ebb away as Connor struggles to save that which is dearest to him. As more people turn to him as a reluctant leader, he finds himself in the crosshairs of an enemy even more dangerous than the GFA.
Prepper by chavez243ca
chavez243ca
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What happens to a family when society fails? What happens to society when civilization comes to an end? When Connor and his family survive the apocalypse, he discovers that survival has a price. As the world falls apart around him, Connor struggles to keep his family and his sanity intact.
Daedalus Krane and the Hand of God by TLDorian
TLDorian
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After five years exile in high in the mountains of Nepal, Doctor Daedalus Krane, engineer, master craftsman, polymath and member of the fabled secret society 'X', returns. Traversing India in his workshop the airship Helios with his latest commission a fantastical clockwork automata he barely recognises the world he left. The Indian subcontinent is succumbing to the advances of sweeping desert sands, huge electrical storms rage over Europe, and vast swathes of the Pacific Ocean have disappeared under pack ice. Following an audacious attack on the Helios, Krane, his pilot Florence 'Flo' Braithwaite and unruly bulldog Mayhem are drawn into a sinister plot that takes them to the four corners of the globe in search of an evil cult and the shadowy criminal, the mysterious Minos. But soon Flo begins to question the investigation. Who is the enigmatic Krane? Why does he seem to know so much about their enemies plans? What is the strange design emblazoned across his chest that exerts such a hold over her? Cover design-'Moar Airship'. Image by Cara Packwood.
The Ice Fair by TLDorian
TLDorian
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For the first time in two hundred years the River Thames has frozen over. In the city an Ice Fair has sprung up bringing the wonders of the old Frost Fairs back to London. Its centrepiece is a circus with a Dragon in it. Audiences are captived, the press at odds -is it real or a clever piece of deception. At an old house in Snowfields, Martin Warr is working his apprenticeship at Warr and Pinkel, his father's Undertakers firm when the body of a young girl cut out from the ice of the frozen river arrives to be prepared for burial. When the ghost of Dr Craw, the Southwark Strangler who haunts the Undertakers house suggests that the girl may have been murdered, Martin decides to investigate. The Ice Fair is a curate's egg of a story. A gothic tale of majicians, angels and ghosts, dragons and gods, of murders and the thing that lurks in the dark, twisting currents of the River Thames. And about an Undertaker who thaws the heart of the Frost Queen. Wonderful Artwork by Shirokibo / DeviantArt