Kimberly Unger

2023 PHILIP K DICK AWARD WINNER In her breakout technothriller, virtual reality expert Kimberly Unger has created the iconic, badass, cyberpunk heroine that you desperately need: Eliza McKay. McKay is disgraced underground hacker who is just trying to take back her career one dangerous job at a time. But when her latest contract throws her into the middle of a corporate power struggle, she finds herself fighting for her life in both the real and digital worlds. "Cyberpunk fans won't want to miss this."--Publishers Weekly Eliza McKay is, by extreme necessity, a low-profile Extractionist. McKay is an expert in the virtual reality space where minds are uploaded as digital personas. When rich or important people get stuck in the Swim for reasons that are sleazy, illegal, or merely unlucky--it's her job to quietly extract them. And McKay's job just got a lot more dangerous. After McKay repels an attack on her Swim persona, hired thugs break into her house to try to hack her cybernetic implants directly. Meanwhile, the corporate executive she was hired to rescue from VR space is surprisingly reluctant to be extracted. Something is lurking in the Swim, and some very powerful people will stop at nothing to keep it secret. This job might be the big break McKay has been waiting for to reboot her career--but only if she can survive long enough to beat the hackers at their own game. With The Extractionist, virtual reality and gaming expert Kimberly Unger (Nucleation) has created an unforgettable cyberplayground where the rich still make their own rules, but a skilled operator remains the wildcard.

2022 Compton Crook Award Finalist "Recommended for fans of Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon and Martha Wells' Murderbot series."--Booklist In this riveting debut science-fiction technothriller, a top-notch VR pilot encounters a disaster during the highest profile space-faring project of her career. Now she must unearth a critical truth: was her discovery due to a betrayal, a business rival, or a threat to humanity itself? Helen Vectorvich just botched first contact. And she did it in both virtual reality and outer space. Only the most elite Far Reaches deep-space pilots get to run waldos: robots controlled from thousands of lightyears away via neural integration and quantum entanglement. Helen and her navigator were heading the construction of a wormhole gate that would connect Earth to the stars . . . until a routine system check turned deadly. As nasty rumors swarm around her, and overeager junior pilots jockey to take her place, Helen makes a startling discovery: microscopic alien life is devouring their corporate equipment. Is the Scale just mindless, extra-terrestrial bacteria? Or is it working--and killing--with a purpose? While Helen struggles to get back into the pilot's chair, and to communicate with the Scale, someone--or something--is trying to sabotage the Far Reaches project once and for all. They'll have to get through Helen first.

Meet Annie, newest member of High Charity's resident gang "The Gophers." The daughter of a fallen Acolyte, Annie has chosen her own path, one that walks the line between who her family wants her to learn to be and who she feels called to become. She sees a different future for herself, one, she believes, empowered by her own free will. But her Ma is keeping secrets from her. When Annie and her best friend Mary are tasked with stealing a magic token from a rival gang member, Annie finds herself witness to the arrival of what will become High Charity's greatest enemy and the breaking of a friendship.