My Best of 2009
Discover the best books of 2009 with this curated reading list, featuring standout titles like Daniel Suarez's Daemon and Freedom, Max Brooks' World War Z, and Michael Connelly's Black Ice and Black Echo. Explore top 2009 fiction and must-reads from a memorable year in literature.
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The Black Ice
by Michael Connelly
L.A.P.D. detective Harry Bosch investigates the mysterious death of a narcotics officer who was reportedly selling a new drug called black ice.
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Freedom
by Daniel Suarez
The propulsive, shockingly plausible sequel to New York Times bestseller Daemon, the "Greatest. Techno-thriller. Period."* *William O'Brien, former director of cybersecurity and communications systems policy at the White House 2009 saw one of the most inventive techno-thriller debuts in decades as Daniel Suarez introduced his terrifying and tantalizing vision of a new world order. Daemon captured the attention of the tech community, became a national bestseller, garnered attention from futurists, literary critics, and the halls of government-leaving readers clamoring for the conclusion to Suarez's epic story. In the opening chapters of Freedom(tm), the Daemon is well on its way toward firm control of the modern world, using an expanded network of real-world, dispossessed darknet operatives to tear apart civilization and rebuild it anew. Civil war breaks out in the American Midwest, with the mainstream media stoking public fear in the face of this 'Corn Rebellion'. Former detective Pete Sebeck, now the Daemon's most famous and most reluctant operative, must lead a small band of enlightened humans in a populist movement designed to protect the new world order. But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all. In a world of conflicted loyalties, rapidly diminishing government control, and a new choice between free will and the continuing comforts of ignorance, the stakes could not be higher: hanging in the balance is nothing less than democracy's last hope to survive the technology revolution.
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The Black Echo
by Michael Connelly
A Vietnam veteran-turned-police detective, Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch discovers the body of a former comrade-in-arms during an investigation and, with the help of an attractive FBI agent, hunts for the murderers along a trail leading back to Saigon. Reprint.
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World War Z
by Max Brooks
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Prepare to be entranced by this addictively readable oral history of the great war between humans and zombies.”—Entertainment Weekly We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the pandemic. The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years. THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE “Will spook you for real.”—The New York Times Book Review “Possesses more creativity and zip than entire crates of other new fiction titles. Think Mad Max meets The Hot Zone. . . . It’s Apocalypse Now, pandemic-style. Creepy but fascinating.”—USA Today “Will grab you as tightly as a dead man’s fist. A.”—Entertainment Weekly, EW Pick “Probably the most topical and literate scare since Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds radio broadcast . . . This is action-packed social-political satire with a global view.”—Dallas Morning News