Word Play...

It’s Your Move…Game Fiction

Imagine your queen is at risk of capture in a chess match, and you are forced to use all the deductive reasoning at your disposal to avoid being checkmated. Now up the ante in a high stakes’ poker game where the odds are too long and the bets too rich. Or simply harness all your cunning to play whatever the role at hand is, whether you are up to the task or not. Throw in some cutthroat competitors and the lure of the evasive victory lap, and maybe, just maybe, you have a sense of how to play the game.

People are hard-wired to seek answers, along with the overwhelming impulse to fill in any blanks. So, it’s no surprise we are predisposed to extrapolate clues from our environment to solve puzzles, whether it’s to move, to advance, or even to survive. Every game we play requires thoughtful consideration, a series of choices and navigations that shapes the course of play.

With all this in mind, is it any wonder game theory and culture has resulted in so many well plotted books? I think not.

So, tap into your inner child, embrace your inherent nerdiness, spark those creative juices, and come play with me.

Game On!

The Grandest Game – Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Welcome to the Grandest Game, an annual competition run by billionaire Avery Grambs and the four infamous Hawthorne brothers, whose family fortune she inherited. Designed to give anyone a shot at fame and fortune, this year’s game requires one of seven golden tickets to enter. With millions on the line, those seven players will do whatever it takes to win. Some of the players are in it for the money. Some for power. Some for reasons all their own. And every single one of them has secrets. Full of mind-bending puzzles the reader will be left to wonder, who has what it takes to play to win.

The Puzzle Master – Danielle Trussoni

Mike is a celebrated and ingenious puzzle creator, he understands patterns no one else can even get a glimpse of. His mental superpower of solving puzzles beyond what ordinary people are capable of came about when he sustained a traumatic brain injury. The same injury left him isolated and struggling to connect. Everything changes when he meets Jess, a woman imprisoned for murder who hasn’t spoken since her arrest. A woman who has drawn a perplexing puzzle, one Mike determines has a cipher. The quest to solve it takes him through interlocking enigmas, and a maze of clues. Touted to be “The Da-Vinci Code with a sprinkle of Stephen King”, this is a read to call in sick for!!

Rabbits – Terry Miles

It’s an average workday. You’ve been wrapped up in a task, when you finally check the clock its 4:44 p.m. You check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize the date is April 4, 4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole? Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses the entire world as its canvas. Since the game started, ten iterations have appeared, and nine winners have been declared. The identities of these winners are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to the secrets of the universe itself. A roller coaster of a read that moves seamlessly from treasure hunt to conspiracy thriller to escape room.

The Eight – Katherine Neville

A legendary, bejeweled chess set is scattered across the globe to ensure that its pieces are kept separate. When united they have the power to topple civilizations. To keep the set from falling into the wrong hands, two novice nuns embark on an adventure unlike anything they could have expected. Two hundred years later, a computer expert finds herself drawn into a deadly game built around the mysterious chess set. Cyphers and puzzles are intricately layered for a brilliant read! A hidden gem in every sense of the word.

Play Dead – Michael A. Arnzen

Johnny knows how to play the high roller; he’d ridden into Vegas on a winning streak a mile wide. But Vegas took everything, including his luck. When he finds himself at a homeless shelter, he figures he couldn’t possibly sink any lower. Johnny soon discovers there’s a game going on, one where the payout is survival and folding means death. Using 52 chapters, this is a novel of cards, stacked with mischief and thrills. Are you ready to play?

The Immortal Game – Mark Coggins

When the world’s most innovative computer chess software is stolen, wisecracking PI August is hired to find it. Encountering everyone from mob fixers to drug addicted dominatrices to transvestite techno nerds, he has his work cut out for him. With style and sass, this smart detective story reminiscent of the golden age of fiction is simply a whole lot of fun! Exactly as any good game should be.

Bullets – Steve Brewer

When a contract killer bumps off a high roller in a Las Vegas casino, it sets off a tangle of romance, gambling, and gunplay. The killer, Lily, is a mysterious woman who is a true professional. But soon, the casino owner, his henchmen, and the victim’s two brothers are on Lily’s trail. Throw in some local cops, a playboy, a new widow, a rug merchant, a harridan, and a couple of idiot gamblers, and the mixture soon boils with intrigue and murder. Add a dash of romance as a strange magnetism develops between Lily and a former cop, dust the whole concoction with humor, and you end up with a crime novel you won’t soon forget.

Board To Death – CJ Connor

Ben, a divorced caregiver, is back home running his family’s board game shop and café. Happily welcoming a diverse clientele, Ben is barley staying on top of his father’s medical bills. Then a local toy and game collector offers to buy his turn of the century edition of the game that inspired Monopoly. Suspicious of his low offer and shady motives, Ben turns him down. When the mysterious stranger shows up dead, he suddenly becomes suspect #1! Witty dialogue and lots of charm make this a delightful cozy read!

Pocket Kings – Ted Heller

When Frank Dixon, a frustrated writer who has seen his career crash and burn, decides to dabble in online poker, he discovers he has a knack for winning. In this newfound realm, populated by alluring characters, each of them elusive, mysterious, and glamorous, he becomes a smash success: popular, rich, and loved. He sees his fortunes grow and his liaisons thrive, but is it real? A black comedy of the highest caliber.

Roll The Dice…

All This & More – Peng Shepherd

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter hates her. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance for the life she wanted and is desperate for a do-over. She can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a game show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present. As everything begins to go her way, it might turn out it’s too good to be true. A novel with an interactive twist…the reader gets to play too!

Past Crimes – Jason Pinter

In the year 2037, nearly all human interactions have migrated to the virtual world and criminal entertainment is a multibillion-dollar industry. Now, true crime fans don’t just listen to podcasts or watch documentaries, they participate in hyper realistic simulations and hunt for clues to solve the most famous crimes in history. Cassie licenses crimes, spending hours convincing grieving families to sell their tragedies to the highest bidder. Getting home late one night she discovers something that changes everything, and that might have her selling her own story. Dark and satirical with a spin on our recent obsession with true crime as entertainment.

Death Warrant – Bryan Johnston

To save her brother from financial ruin, Frankie must cash in her chips. A has-been mentalist who never made it big, Frankie agrees to be assassinated on the most popular television show on the planet, Death Warrant. Once she signs her life away, her memory is wiped clean of the agreement. Leaving her with no idea she is about to be offed in a spectacular fashion for the purpose of entertainment. What’s not to love about this premise…

All Your Twisted Secrets – Diana Urban

What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it's a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill, or else everyone dies. With the clock ticking down, fear morphs into panic as they try to get out alive by figuring out why them. A twisted ode to the escape room.

Purgatory – Brandon Cornett

The year is 2065, and Purgatory is the hottest thing on television. The survival-based reality show places death-row inmates on a remote island populated by horrors, some genetically engineered, some conjured, all of them deadly. Those who succeed serve the remainder of their sentences in Paradise, a minimum-security facility with open visitation and other luxuries. Failure, on the other hand, means death. The rules are simple, get to the island, collect three “souvenirs” in three days. A contemporary Running Man!

You’re Not Supposed To Die Tonight – Kalynn Bayron

At Camp Mirror Lake, terror is the name of the game, but can you survive the night? Charity has landed the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at the camp. Guests pay to be scared out of their ever lovin’ minds in a full contact game of terror, as Charity and the crew recreate scenes from classic slasher films. Then Charity’s co-workers start disappearing and when they start showing up dead, it all becomes much too real. Makes this horror lover wonder, which trope would I like to play in? Babysitter? High School outcast? Haunted House Dweller? So many choices!

Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune, and control of the OASIS itself. Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on, and the only way to survive is to win. A ridiculously fun and addictive read!

Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin

When Sam spots Sadie on a crowded subway platform, he has no idea it will be the start of something epic. Collaborating on their shared dream, they borrow money and beg favors to create their first blockbuster game, a game where players can escape the confines of a body and betrayals of a heart and where death means nothing more than a pressing restart. What could possibly go wrong? An intricately imagined novel that explores games as art, technology and the human experience and above all, our need to connect.

Freedom Trials – Meredith Tate

Evelyn is imprisoned for a crime that was wiped from her memory. In order for her to be released, she, along with other reformed prisoners, must pass seven mental, physical and virtual challenges known as the Freedom Trials. One mistake means execution, and with her history of being a snitch, her fellow inmates will do everything they can to get revenge. Hunger Games and Maze Runner vibes are all over this read.