THE CLOUD

Disoriented and bloody after a near-deadly fall onto the subway tracks, freelance journalist Nat Idle discovers that a beautiful stranger has come to his aid - and that the burly man who barreled into him had intended to do Nat harm. What he doesn't know is why - and his quest for answers leads him to uncover a handful of mysterious deaths, and a bizarre neurological disorder plaguing children of the Bay Area - as he ventures into the Cloud.

In a brave new world, the Cloud is where we store data, secrets, dreams. But it is something more - something insidious with the power to change not just how we interact with the world, but our behavior, and brains. Nat, in search of the truth, finds himself lost in a psychedelic maze, discovering things that cannot possibly be, realizing there is no one and nothing he can trust - not even in his own mind.

Matt Richtel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times technology journalist and novelist. He is the author of two previous critically acclaimed novels, Hooked and Devil's Plaything, and his fiction, like his journalism, focuses on the impact of technology on how people live, behave, and love in the 21st century. He won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for his series on distracted driving.