Books with title The Peripheral

The New York Times bestselling author of such “high-tech dystopian thriller[s]”* as Neuromancer and Zero History presents his first novel since 2010.Flynne Fisher lives down a country road, in a rural near-future America where jobs are scarce, unless you count illegal drug manufacture, which she’s trying to avoid. Her brother Burton lives, or tries to, on money from the Veterans Administration, for neurological damage suffered in the Marines’ elite Haptic Recon unit. Flynne earns what she can by assembling product at the local 3D printshop. She made more as a combat scout in an online game, playing for a rich man, but she’s had to let the shooter games go.Wilf Netherton lives in London, seventy-some years later, on the far side of decades of slow-motion apocalypse. Things are pretty good now, for the haves, and there aren’t many have-nots left. Wilf, a high-powered publicist and celebrity-minder, fancies himself a romantic misfit, in a society where reaching into the past is just another hobby. Burton’s been moonlighting online, secretly working security in some game prototype, a virtual world that looks vaguely like London, but a lot weirder. He’s got Flynne taking over shifts, promised her the game’s not a shooter. Still, the crime she witnesses there is plenty bad.Flynne and Wilf are about to meet one another. Her world will be altered utterly, irrevocably, and Wilf’s, for all its decadence and power, will learn that some of these third-world types from the past can be badass.*New York Magazine

The Horror High annual handball competition is a fight to the death—even if you're already dead It's the annual handball competition at Horror High. The court is marked out in fresh blood and powdered teeth, and every student with their brain sewn in the right way is furiously perfecting their most devious death plays. The heat is definitely on. Tony Bones–Jones is the molten hot favorite, but an unidentified masked assailant has come roaring up through the ranks. The Bonester isn't worried. He's dispatched the best Horror High could throw at him, and sent them limping off the court weeping like onion–chopping old women. But this masked opponent is different—it's as if he can anticipate Tony's every move. Is there some devilry at work here? Two champions, two destinies. Revenge will be sweet.