Clay Chapman

The Americans meets The Exorcist as a suburban family are radicalised by a demonic force, seeping through social media and twenty-four hour news cycles. Perfect for fans of Delilah S. Dawson, Gretchen Felker-Martin and Jordan Peele. Noah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the "Great Reckoning" is here, he assumes it's related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trance-like state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get medical help. Then Noah's mother brutally attacks him. But Noah isn't the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart-–literally-–as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend watching particular channels, using certain apps, or visiting certain websites. In Noah's Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn–-but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes? This ambitious, searing novel from "one of horror's modern masters" holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

Erica England 

It started with a bit of rubbernecking. Asher wanted to peek at what was happening on the other news channels. It was wise—healthy, even—to take in a range of reporting. He was well aware of how social media siloed people into echo chambers of recycled misinformation. He saw it in his own family. All the scrolling. His wife got her news from Facebook, of all places. That wasn’t news, that was simply an algorithmic force-feeding of bullshit masking itself as info.

Devon wanted to join them. Be one of them. Swim in their stream. She yearned to crawl through her tablet’s screen and be a part of that photo-filtered existence. Crema. Perpetua. Valencia. So many filters to pick and choose from. She was spending more time online, scrolling through her tablet. It was so easy to lose herself in the endless outcropping of profiles, the tea-drinking, sweater-wearing, mountain-hiking, parasailing beauties. Smiling back at her. Winking.

Benjamin Pendleton was the first to pull out his cell phone. He held it up and recorded Caleb. Another student pulled out their camera as well, recording. It was such a knee-jerk reaction, Caleb thought with contempt—capturing the moment on camera. Rather than stand up from their seats and help, see if he was all right, they videotaped him. Livestreamed it. The lens put enough distance between Caleb and themselves that they could pretend this moment wasn’t happening to them, too. As if they weren’t even there. It was more pressing to share this slice of life than to participate in it. The moment needed to be spread rather than resolved.

If you really want to wake people up, you need to go viral.

To spread into a million glimmering fragments.

Devon was desperate to enter that endless current of photos on her feed, to swim with the women of wellness, a siren herself. She imagined them all as mermaids. Every last lady. Beautiful mermaids. The scales on their tails were thousands of tiny smartphone screens, shimmering with that familiar pixelated mother-of-pearl, a swirling rainbow hue, purples and pinks and greens, an oil spill of glistening electricity.

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