** WATTYS 2018 WINNER ** Big Tech meets Die Hard in this techno-thriller Kirkus Reviews calls "a clever, spirited tale with a brainy, nimble heroine at the helm." From IndieReader's 5-star (highest rating) review: "Bond weaves an entertaining tale filled with deceit, robots, Russians, and tech entrepreneurs that all combine to give the reader a reason to flip pages furiously to find out what might happen next." Deb Bollinger has no time for corporate training. Her company's top engineer at just twenty-seven, Deb has blocked off her day for the one project she truly cares about: the launch of Carebnb, an app that finds spare beds for the homeless. When she's told all employees must drop everything for some busywork exercise called Blackquest 40, it's an easy no. Trouble is, her bosses aren't really asking. Blackquest 40 is the mother of all corporate trainings. A near-impossible project to be completed in forty straight hours. No phones. No internet. Sleeping on cots. Nobody in, nobody out. Deb finds the whole setup creepy and authoritarian. When a Carebnb issue necessitates her leaving the office, she heads for the door. What's the worst that could happen? Armed commandos, HVAC-duct chases, a catastrophic master plan that gets darker by the hour - Blackquest 40 is a fresh take on the Die Hard formula, layering smart-drones and a modern heroine onto the classic action tale. Cover design and illustration by Ethan Scott.

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.

If you think artificial intelligence is dangerous, then you don't know the real threat to humanity's future... Luna Valencia is the founder of the hottest artificial intelligence startup in history. She's about to become incredibly rich and powerful. But just when she's about to take her company public, her world begins to fall apart. On the day of her startup's IPO, a stock exchange shooter plummets Luna into a downward spiral toward a threat more menacing than she ever imagined possible. Faced with losing her company, her entire world, Luna searches for answers to a series of terrifying accusations. Failing to uncover the truth could destroy her company... but success would get her killed. Big Data is a fresh approach to the artificial intelligence sci-fi thriller. If you like fast-paced action, heart-stopping tension, and tech-filled worlds set in the near future, then you'll love Lucas Carlson's latest novel. Read Big Data to discover the AI twist today!

In a society where morals are determined by a public opinion system, and social rating is the currency, truth can be a dangerous notion. Sixteen-year-old Rena has few memories of her childhood before adoption. The voice of the man who raised her. A forest teeming with wildlife. Mountains reaching up to a blue sky. The problem-they're not real. Such things don't exist in Esh, a self-governed metropolis shielded from the harsh environment by a transparent canopy. And beyond the city lie only the Barrens, an endless wasteland of fog and freezing rain. When Rena's violent instincts save the lives of her friends, her delusional past begins disrupting her prospects for the future. To find the source of her impulses, she'll have to sort through the fragments in her mind. What awaits is a connection between her true identity, the city's forgotten history, and the secret war being waged beneath the surface of her polite society.

When, one day, the world just suddenly ends, Em stumbles into the nothing, an empty void that lies beneath the surface of reality, the sole occupants of which are malevolent shadow beings called glowdarks. Only a select number of individuals possess the ability to peel their way into new worlds; they are the rippers. Em is one of them. He can sense the "rips" scattered throughout each dimension and use them to peel through to the next world. Em and his group of survivors peel through world after world, battling glowdarks, zombies, and even gods in their quest to find a safe haven in a post-apocalyptic multiverse. [Cover Art By: eWritersInk] [Highest Rank Reached: #218 in Fantasy, April 9, 2016]

The story of Michael Thomas, a family man who worked for the U.S. army, and the experiments that were done on him. Shortly after after his return home from nearly six months as a captive of war, Michael is offered a top secret job that sounds too good to be true. When Michael refuses, he is dragged away from his family and tested on against his will, finding himself a prisoner once again, in a way he never imagined. __________ S.M.A.R.T The Subject of Mind Altering Research and Testing A psychological thriller. ________ Please vote & comment if you like. Thank you for taking the time to read my stuff. This is a work of fiction. All works © 2015 Richard Harley

"Appearances can be deceiving- especially if you're not looking hard enough." This is a story about superheroes. Also, it isn't. I should know. I'm trapped in it. *** Meet Jack. A stereotypical protagonist with a tragic backstory who discovers he has powers and uses them to save The City aided by his trusted friends- except he isn't. What's the hushed-up secret the Government is keeping about The City- and why is it against a hero? What's up with Jack's history teacher? What exactly is his University hiding? Why is there the occasional unnecessary reference? How sinister are the skeletons lurking in his so-called friends' cupboards? And which one of them is a cold-blooded murderer? Secrets, secrets, everywhere- but the more he unravels, the closer he thinks he is to being free, the more Jack finds himself linked to forces outside his control and events he barely remembers, stuck in a fictional universe where, it would seem, everyone is against him. ___ Highest ranks that I have no idea how this thing received- #2 thriller #3 mystery #4 fourthwall #5 breakstereotypes #8 masks #16 projectsuper #143 humour ...among others. Thanks a lot, guys! :D

Dr. Hortense Gray practices experimental psychology on an uninhabited island off the coast of California where people go wanting to die and leave fighting to live. Seventeen-year-old Daphne Janus is her newest patient. Watch a 40-sec trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMt5fO1xtHw

Following a nuclear holocaust, Nathan Taylor and his family face grim choices in order to stay alive. Fleeing deadly radiation, plague and desperate men, Nathan, an army officer, leads his wife and their two teenage sons away from chaos and madness toward his ancestral home in Kentucky. Horrors lie in their path. From the prison struggling to maintain control of its inmates, to the desperadoes who enslave anyone who comes their way, even survival may cost Nathan his humanity...or that of his sons, Joshua and David. Nathan struggles to keep his family intact, but it requires making brutal choices. He wants to protect his sons, but knows they now must be deadly and cold at times. Nathan's home has been spared from the worst of the destruction, but a larger conflict over scarce resources erupts. For the survivors to have any chance they will have to fight and the desperate journey has transformed young Joshua and David into men called upon to lead and sacrifice. Torn between harsh realities, and wanting to hold onto fleeting childhoods, they are often conflicted and angry about the roles thrust upon them. Much will depend on how Nathan and his sons respond to a madman and his military regime seeking to conquer the fledgling community they are helping to build. GLIMMER OF HOPE is an epic tale of one family's endurance and triumph after tomorrow's apocalypse.

The next big thing may already be crawling around your attic. When a sorority prank with a microbot lands him in hot water, university student Mason Donnelly is recruited to work on a secret project at a remote research facility. As the newest member of a team of brilliant misfits, he must reverse engineer a new class of robot with capabilities beyond anything previously thought possible. But the robot may have an agenda of its own...