Showing results by author "Taya DeVere" in All Categories

Bill and Sebastian don’t get along. Yes, they need to work together to solve the problems facing City of California… but Bill despises the Aussie in the top hat, and nothing will change his mind on that point. That wouldn’t be a problem if they just avoided each other. Unfortunately, Sebastian is Maria’s partner, and Maria is one of Bill’s best friends. Sebastian is also the greatest salesman the world has ever known, and he’s using that skill to build a sinister cult, completely obedient to his every whim.

Depressed and abandoned after my father dies, I'm sent to a therapy center where I must decide between two doors. Behind one door awaits life in my home country where I will continue to scramble through a tangle of mistakes and a poisonous relationship, but old and new friendships alike may be my salvation. Escape lies behind the second door, where I can run away to an unknown country far away where demanding physical labor will push aside my inner demons. This door could be a fresh start.

In the two years since the Great Affliction, the Happiness Program has transformed a civilization on the brink of extinction into an organized, beautiful, and happy society. However, for the Unchipped—those whose chips can't connect to the system—living a comfortable life remains out of reach. Kaarina, one of the Unchipped, would give anything to live inside the walls of the city again. But when her horse's illness drives her into the city to find medicine, she becomes acquainted with a Chipped man who makes her question everything.

Bill is one of the lucky few. While the other Unchipped near the City of California scavenge for food amid the constant threat of gunfire, Bill's spent the last two years at the Mansion—a haven for the select few who design products to be sold in the green city. He's safe for now...unlike his friend Kaarina, who is leading a revolution on the other side of the world. Bill is the Mansion's CEO, but he's haunted by the act of violence that got him the job. Danger lies beyond the protective gates of this repressive sanctuary.

It's 2085, the time of the Great Affliction. Continents are burning, land is disappearing, and humanity is destroying itself as mass shootings and suicides wipe out the population. To Marjaana Salonen, the solution is found in high technology. By integrating the human brain with a sophisticated computer chip, she believes she can bring new hope to society. Her invention was supposed to fix it all, but Salonen's daughter has her own ideas. To Laura, her mother's invention is an opportunity to impose her own vision on the world—the promise of a new reality that is far more sinister.

Having agreed to work with the sinister Nurse Saarinen, Kaarina sets off on a quest through the cyberspace world of her own mind. Her goal is to find the weakness at the core of the Egg, allowing Nurse Saarinen to upload herself and destroy Laura Solomon. In her quest for revenge on the woman who killed her mother, Kaarina will forget everything she knows about Nurse Saarinen...

Luna lives in a run-down old farmhouse outside City of Serbia, her only companions the alcoholic Reverend Marić and a constantly growing pack of half-feral dogs. As one of the last Unchipped still alive in the area, she lives by her wits as a hacker and thief. When a spy from the City exposes her presence there, Luna is offered a choice: see her life destroyed or find the rebels who have been giving the Chipped so much trouble.

Jovan has been helping the Unchipped rebels by recruiting soldiers to join their cause. His girlfriend Luna is a rebel herself, but she doesn’t trust him enough to share her secrets. He’s Chipped and she isn’t, and that’s all there is to it.

Margaret Lewis is an expert programmer, the hacker who betrayed the Happiness Program to help the Unchipped rebels. A hunted fugitive, she slips from one city to another recruiting people for a new society, a place where Chipped and Unchipped can live together as equals. Targeted by a vicious attack, Margaret disappears into a liquor bottle. She’s content to be lost…until she finds out that the Happiness Program has kidnapped her daughter.

Dennis Jenkins is a playboy. The new leader of the Happiness Program, he spends his free time looking for love in virtual reality. It’s an empty existence, haunted by the memory of the family he lost...and by his obsession with Maria, the lethal Unchipped woman who used to work for him. Now Maria has returned, and she has a message. Someone else in the Happiness Program wants him dead, and they’re sending an assassin so deadly that only one person can protect him–Maria herself, the one woman he wants but can never have.

For Dr. Laura Solomon, dying was nothing more than an inconvenience. With her body gone, her mind is more powerful than ever before. She roams the computer systems of the world at will, helping the Unchipped rebels she has chosen to protect—and occasionally dealing with Luna, her demanding new assistant.