Glass Houses - by Madeline Ashby Paperback

Book Synopsis

A group of employees and their CEO, celebrating the sale of their remarkable emotion-mapping-AI-algorithm, crash onto a not-quite-deserted tropical island.

Luckily, those who survived have found a beautiful, fully-stocked private palace, with all the latest technological updates (though one without connection to the outside world). The house, however, has more secrets than anyone might have guessed, and a much darker reason for having been built and left behind.

Kristen, the hyper-competent "chief emotional manager" (a position created by her eccentric, boyish billionaire boss, Sumter) is trying to keep her colleagues stable throughout this new challenge, but staying sane seems to be as much of a challenge as staying alive.

Being a woman in tech has always meant having to be smarter than anyone expects--and Kristen's knack for out-of-the-box problem-solving and quick thinking has gotten her to the top of her field. But will a killer instinct be enough to survive the island?

A gleefully decadent near future whodunit from Madeline Ashby, the acclaimed futurist and author of Company Town--perfect for fans of Severance, The White Lotus, and Black Mirror.

Review Quotes

Praise for Company Town

"Smart, weird dystopia." --Margaret Atwood

"Elegant, cruel, and brutally perfect, Company Town is a prize of a novel."
--Mira Grant, New York Times Bestselling and Hugo award-nominated author of the Newsflesh series

"This is brave, bold, crazy storytelling at the edge and doesn't read like anything else I've seen up or down the pike." --Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author of Aftermath

"Company Town is a locked-room murder mystery at sea...Hwa ranks with science fiction's great badasses, and as a technological refusenik, she's the perfect protagonist for this story about the way that money, power and technology all dream together." - Cory Doctorow

"Loved Company Town, Madeline Ashby's wonderfully imaginative new sci-fi mystery with a fascinating female protagonist." --Feminist Frequency

"A thrilling near-future noir mystery....A fascinating book from a writer with great vision." --Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse Novels series

"A book that keeps you thinking about what it means to be human in a posthuman world--even as it also keeps you entertained with action, serial killers, and crazy plot twists." --io9

About the Author

Madeline Ashby is a consulting futurist and novelist based in Toronto. She is the author of the Machine Dynasty series, Company Town, and contributor to How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange. She has developed science fiction prototypes for Changeist, the Institute for the Future, the Smithsonian Institution, SciFutures, Nesta, The World Health Organization, the World Bank, the Atlantic Council, and others. She is a member of the AI Policy Futures Group at the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination, and the XPRIZE Sci-Fi Advisory Council. Her work has appeared in BoingBoing, Slate, MIT Technology Review, WIRED, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.