Neal Stephenson

While a group of Barbary galley slaves plots to escape their lives of servitude on board a seventeenth-century pirate ship, spy and socialite Eliza is forcibly returned to the court of the Sun King, where she becomes enmeshed in a web of international machinations. By the author of Cryptonomicon. Reprint. 100,000 first printing.

From his triumphant debut with Snow Crash to the stunning success of his latest novel, Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson has quickly become the voice of a generation. In this now-classic political thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a savagely witty, chillingly topical tale set in the tense moments of the Gulf War. When a foreign exchange student is found murdered at an Iowa University, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks finds that his investigation extends far beyond the small college town--all the way to the Middle East. Shady events at the school reveal that a powerful department is using federal grant money for highly dubious research. And what it's producing is a very nasty bug. Navigating a plot that leads from his own backyard to Washington, D. C., to the Gulf, where his Army Reservist wife has been called to duty, Banks realizes he may be the only person who can stop the wholesale slaughtering of thousands of Americans. It's a lesson in foreign policy he'll never forget.

From his triumphant debut with Snow Crash to the stunning success of his latest novel, Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson has quickly become the voice of a generation. In this now-classic thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a shocking tale with an all-too plausible premise. There's no way William A. Cozzano can lose the upcoming presidential election. He's a likable midwestern governor with one insidious advantage--an advantage provided by a shadowy group of backers. A biochip implanted in his head hardwires him to a computerized polling system. The mood of the electorate is channeled directly into his brain. Forget issues. Forget policy. Cozzano is more than the perfect candidate. He's a special effect. "Complex, entertaining, frequently funny."--Publishers Weekly "Qualifies as the sleeper of the year, the rare kind of science-fiction thriller that evokes genuine laughter while simultaneously keeping the level of suspense cranked to the max."-- San Diego Union-Tribune"A Manchurian Candidate for the computer age." --Seattle Weekly

Amazingly, they succeed - leaving some very unhappy men behind who vow to hunt down the vagabonds and bring them to justice, no matter the cost. Meanwhile, back in France, the beautiful Eliza - toast of Versailles and spy extraordinaire - attempts to return to London with her baby, a child whose paternity is shrouded in mystery.

Including a cast of characters such as Newton, Leibniz, Christopher Wren, Charles II, Cromwell and the young Benjamin Franklin, this book shows the ability to get inside a place and time; and more.

The exploits of an alchemy-rejecting scientist, a vagabond leader, and a former Turkish harem prisoner intersect in the world of the American colonies, the Tower of London, and the courts of France, in a novel set against the backdrop of the late seventeeth century and early eighteenth century. By the author of Cryptonomicon. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 150,000 first printing.

A combination of satire and thriller, this story occurs around the eve of the third millennium. Cozzano, a mid-Western governer has a biochip in his head, wired to a computerized polling system, tracking the mood of the electorate. The prospect of a radio-controlled President is not a good one.

Troubleshooter and environmentalist Sangamon Taylor has his work cut out exposing contaminators and embarrassing powerful corporations. Chased by the FBI, the Mafia and a group of Satanists, he does a good job with the help of his Zodiac raft.

The New York Times Book Review called Neal Stephenson's most recent novel "electrifying" and "hilarious". but if you want to know Stephenson was doing twenty years before he wrote the epic Cryptonomicon, it's back-to-school time. Back to The Big U, that is, a hilarious send-up of American college life starring after years our of print, The Big U is required reading for anyone interested in the early work of this singular writer.

The "brilliantly realized" (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don't dare leave their mansions. Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary. But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state). Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He'll be joined by Y. T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.

Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time Decades into our future, a stone's throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer's purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly. Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands. Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes--members of the poor, tribeless class. Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell. When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorian--John Percival Hackworth--in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer. Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own. Expelled from the neo-Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of Protocol Enforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist. His quest and Nell's will ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primer--a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive information network that is destined to decode and reprogram the future of humanity.

More than fifty years after Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse and Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe are assigned to Detachment 2702, a secret cryptographic mission, their grandchildren--Randy and Amy--join forces to create a "data haven" in the South Pacific, only to uncover a massive conspiracy with roots in Detachment 2702. Reprint.

Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that have shaped the past century. He weaves together the cracking of the Axis codes during WWII and the quest to establish a free South East Asian 'data haven' for digital information in the present.