Spotlight of 51% by Matt Witten

 

PHOTO SOURCE:

TYPORAMA

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51%

MATT WITTEN

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ALL INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.

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51% is a gritty, fast-paced thriller about power, justice, and what happens when everything—even people—can be owned.

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April 28, 2026

Level Best Books

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AUTHOR BLURBS:

“Matt Witten’s 51% is a thrilling and adventurous glimpse into an all-too-possible, terrifying future, with characters full of heart who fight for justice against the cruelty of corporate-led AI. I couldn't put this book down - read it now!" - Lee Matthew Goldberg, author of The Mentor and The Great Gimmelmans

"Sharp, urgent, and impossible to put down. 51% is the dystopian thriller America needs right now. A premise so good I wish I had thought of it." - Daniel G. Miller, USA Today bestselling author of The Orphanage By The Lake

"Part cop-drama, part dystopian-nightmare, and completely unputdownable, 51% draws us into a near-future society where everything is privatized and monitored. When a young girl owned by a syndicate is murdered, an officer in the for-profit NYPD, Inc., takes on the case—against the urging of his colleagues, as this investigation is not likely to pay out. A thought-provoking and propulsive look at greed, autonomy, and resilience in a world gone wrong." - Allison Buccola, author of The Ascent

"Matt Witten takes us on a hallucinatory trip into a dystopian near-future in which fire and police departments, once-public hospitals, and even streets have been ruthlessly privatized, services go to the highest bidder, and the indebted sell themselves to profit-making syndicates. Witten’s noir thriller moves at propulsive speed, intertwining beleaguered cops, corporate predators, underground rebels, and AI-driven supercomputers. It is a world whose seeds, Witten suggests, have already been planted." – Fergus M. Bordewich, award-winning author of Klan War

Here are excerpts from a few reviews: "51% is a wildly imaginative mashup of a dystopian sci-fi adventure and a police procedural. A heady, exuberant treat, Matt Witten's latest sets him apart from his peers." - Andres Kabel, readlistenwatch.com. 

"Think Minority Report and Bladerunner meet Idiocracy. Witten has crafted a thrilling and entertaining story featuring a frightening world we better hope remains on the pages of a novel." - Steve Netter, Best Thriller Books. 

"This was wild!" - @readthisandsteep on Instagram. "If, like me, you are not usually drawn to futuristic fiction, don't worry — while 51% is set in the future, it remains highly relevant, accessible, and incredibly entertaining. I cannot recommend this book highly enough." - Zelda Smit, Featz Reviews.

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OTHER REVIEWS:

https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/51

https://irresponsiblereader.com/?s=51%25

https://firstcluereviews.com/?p=5179

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ABOUT 51%:

In a future where corporations own everything—including people—one murder ignites a revolution.

 

Twenty years from now, the United States is completely privatized. The Big Six syndicates own schools, roads, police departments… even human beings.

 

When a young immigrant woman—51% owned by the syndicates—is brutally murdered, NYPD, Inc. detective Juke O'Keefe and his partner, crime marketing consultant Haylee Navarro, catch the case. Pregnant and broke, Haylee knows they can’t crowdfund enough from a dead immigrant to pay for basic forensics, let alone their paychecks. But Juke, with his old-school sense of justice, is determined to find the killer.

 

Their search for the truth leads them to Juke’s ex, a Resistance leader on the syndicates’ most wanted list. As the three join forces, they stumble onto a conspiracy designed to destroy the last shreds of American freedom. To rescue fifty-one percenters—and everyone else—from syndicate control, they’ll have to defeat the Red Queen, the most ruthless, powerful AI in the world.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Matt Witten is a TV writer, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who has written for Law & Order, House, Pretty Little Liars, Supernatural, CSI: Miami, and many other shows.

His thriller The Necklace has been published in eight languages and optioned for film by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Killer Story won a Foreword Indie award for Best Mystery.

Matt wrote four amateur sleuth novels, including the Malice Domestic Award-winning Breakfast at Madeline’s, and has been nominated for two Edgars and an Emmy.

His speculative thriller 51% came out last month; NBC has hired him to cowrite a TV adaptation.

You can read Matt’s piece “Burn, Baby, Burn: Losing Our Home in the Palisades Fire” here.

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FIND THE AUTHOR AT THE LINKS BELOW:

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Book Blogger Hop - 6/19/2026

                                           

Question of the Week:

Do you prefer writing long, detailed reviews or quick, punchy ones? 

(submitted by Billy @ Coffee-Addicted Writer)

My Answer:

I prefer writing in between detailed and quick.

I give the gist of the book without going into too much detail - it’s not a book report.  😃 

Then I give a sentence about who would enjoy the book.

Friendly Fill-Ins - 6/19/2026

                                                      

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FRIENDLY FILL-INS:

1. Let's bring back _______.

2. _________is the new ________.

3. I appreciate that my local area _______.

4. _______ is my least favorite part about where I live.

MY ANSWERS:

1.  Let’s bring back respect everywhere.

2.  Seventy is the new Fifty.

3.  I appreciate that my local area has a Farmer’s Market.

4.  No clothing stores or good restaurants close by are my least favorite parts about where I live.

 

Spotlight of Summer's Never Over by Darby Bozeman

PHOTO SOURCE:

TYPORAMA
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SUMMER'S NEVER OVER

DARBY BOZEMAN

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ALL INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS COURTESY OF TARA O'CONNOR | SENIOR PUBLICIST | BERKLEY, AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE AND THE PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE

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This summer, the irresistible voice and surprising twists of We Were Liars meets the eerie summer camp setting of The God of the Woods in Darby Bozeman’s riveting dual-timeline debut thriller.

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June 9, 2026

Berkley Trade Original

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PRAISE FOR SUMMER'S NEVER OVER:

“Eerie and propulsive. A fantastic debut that will have you racing toward its final pages.”—Jessica Goodman, New York Times bestselling author of The Counselors

“Darby Bozeman has the perfect beach read in this sinister summer camp thriller, where the paradisical woods of Dread’s Cove hide not only hot bodies and cold waters, but dark secrets. Summer’s Never Over is like the best campfire s’mores: layered, singed by flame around the edges, a little dark, a little sweet, and a whole lot addictive. Thriller lovers will gobble this up.”—Ashley Winstead, USA Today bestselling author of This Book Will Bury Me

“Equal parts sultry romance and gripping mystery, Summer’s Never Over pulled me under like a riptide, each twist sharper and each revelation more satisfying than the last. A shimmering debut about the love that won’t let you go, the friendships that change you, and the long-buried secrets that threaten to ignite it all.”—Kelsey Cox, bestselling author of Party of Liars

“A book that feels like August sun on your skin and spooky nights by a crackling fire, Summer’s Never Over lives up to its nostalgic title. A must-read for anyone chasing that high of a sparkling summer on the lake—or the spine-tingling chill that awakens after sundown.”—Ande Pliego, USA Today Bestselling author of You are Fatally Invited

“Summer’s Never Over is the perfect book to curl up with after a long day spent in the sun, when all you want to do is hide under the covers with a page-turning mystery. The atmospheric summer camp setting is a dreamy backdrop for the threads of romance and mystery that Bozeman so expertly weaves throughout the plot.”—Olivia Muenter, USA Today Bestselling Author of Such a Bad Influence

“Darby Bozeman’s Summer’s Never Over is a mesmerizing story about friendship and secrets that will keep you riveted until the very last page. Reading this book is like returning to summer camp, full of new best friends and whispered confidences… except in this version, not all is as it seems, and it dawns on you that those hidden truths just might lead to your horrific demise. Bozeman’s writing succeeds on both a level of incredible tension and lyrical prose, making it sure to be your next unputdownable thriller.”—Jessica Payne, author of Somebody Worth Killing

“Darby Bozeman’s debut is simmering with suspense and summer camp nostalgia. Packed with emotional tension and haunting imagery, Summer’s Never Over is the perfect vacation read!”—Miranda Smith, author of Smile for the Cameras

“Summer’s Never Over has everything you want in a summer thriller: a tight-knit summer camp setting, long-buried secrets, sizzling romance, and tension that crackles from every page. Darby Bozeman’s debut is as intoxicating as the intense, all-consuming female friendships at its center—I couldn’t put it down!”—Olivia Worley, author of So Happy Together

“An addicting mix of family secrets, sweltering summer love and the ever twisting strands of female friendship, in Summer’s Never Over, Darby Bozeman skillfully weaves heart-panging romance with a gripping murder mystery. I couldn’t read it fast enough.”—Catherine Walsh, author of Holiday Romance

“Impressive debut…an addictive thriller ideal for summer reading.”—Publishers Weekly

**PRAISE TAKEN FROM 

THE PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE**

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ABOUT SUMMER'S NEVER OVER:

In this addictive dual-timeline debut novel, a woman confronts her past at the remote Southern summer camp where the tragic death of her fellow counselor may not have been an accident after all.

Five years ago, Greer left her family’s summer camp in the mountains of Georgia and vowed she’d never return. An idyllic season had turned into a nightmare after a mysterious Phantom began stalking the camp—and ended with Greer’s friend and fellow counselor dead. Losing Steph shattered everything, and Greer’s been fleeing from the grief ever since.

But then Greer’s mother dies, and Greer finds herself back at Dread’s Cove, surrounded by the people she was closest to that intense summer. Two ex-boyfriends—one a childhood sweetheart, the other the guy she’s never gotten over—and old friends. Including Margo, Steph’s best friend.

Greer and Margo didn’t leave things on the best of terms. But now, Margo needs her. Margo never believed that Steph’s death in that horrific fire was an accident—and she’s on the trail of an explosive secret Steph took to her grave.

Greer has to make a choice: keep the Cove’s secrets and her own, or finally face the truth about that summer.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Darby Bozeman grew up in Portland, Oregon, but she’s spent the better part of her adult life in the South.

She has a master’s in teaching from the University of Georgia and she taught middle school English for five years.

When she’s not reading or writing, she loves acting in community theater and discussing pop culture.

She lives in Knoxville with her husband, Bryan, and their cat, Claude.

**AUTHOR INFORMATION TAKEN 

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE and PHOTO TAKEN FROM AUTHOR'S GOODREADS PAGE**

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FOLLOW THE AUTHOR:

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Spotlight of Good Company by Kate Christensen

PHOTO SOURCE:
TYPORAMA
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GOOD COMPANY

KATE CHRISTENSEN

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ALL INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS COURTESY OF  MICHELLE BLANKENSHIP OF BLANKENSHIP PUBLIC RELATIONS

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From the brilliant Kate Christensen, winner of the PEN/Faulkner award for The Great Man, comes a compelling, searing, funny novel about women, sex, power, and self-reckoning.

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June 16, 2026

Harper Hardcover

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PRAISE FOR GOOD COMPANY:

 

"Christensen’s adeptness at character development and psychological analysis shines . . . . An astute addition to a decade of discussions about consent and predation."—Kirkus Reviews
 
"Nuanced . . . . Julia’s complex characterization will stay with readers."—Publishers Weekly
 
"Kate Christensen eloquently deconstructs female desire and ambition and the ways in which those twin drives can be manipulated by men and women alike. The result is a novel that is emotionally raw, bracingly honest, and filled with compassion."—Marisa Silver, author of At Last
 
"This is a memoir disguised as a novel, starring a protagonist who has written a memoir—a super-sharp postmodern experiment in memory and narrative subjectivity. It is Kate Christensen’s best novel yet, a wonder and a triumph!”—Jessica Anthony, author of The Most 

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ABOUT GOOD COMPANY:

Ever since her father broke her heart when she was nine, Julia Heimdahl has tried to be good company for bad men: a jovial drinking companion, an easygoing, witty non-complainer, one of the boys. Now a literary novelist in late middle age and late mid-career, she is at a moment of crisis, although she doesn’t know it yet. 
 
The novel takes place over the course of a weekend-long book festival at Baldwin College, which happens to be Julia’s alma mater, where she has come to promote her recently published memoir. She’s been placed on a panel with a fellow memoirist named Ellis Blackwell, a man so outrageously flirtatious and fawningly flattering, Julia is almost too disarmed to recognize how dangerous he is. 
 
Interweaving excerpts from Julia's memoir with her encounters with important people from her past—the woman she was in love with in college, her old New York mentor, her male editor, her literary nemesis, a former graduate student—GOOD COMPANY examines what it really means to be “good company" as Julia faces her demons and comes to terms with what she really wants from sex, life, and work.

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A Conversation with Kate Christensen

Author of GOOD COMPANY 

Q: What made you write this book? What was the initial impulse, and what was the inspiration that allowed you to see it through to the end? 

A: Over the past ten or fifteen years, I've been feeling increasingly aware, both personally and generally, of how men treat women, but also how women treat one another, in ways that feel destructive but aren’t necessarily personal or intentional. Misogyny is widespread, entrenched, and shared by both men and women. Women tend to internalize it. Men tend to externalize it. But the source is the same, an almost universal view of women as less-than. 

I wanted to write a novel about this. But to write a novel about something, you have to tell a story, you have to create characters whose interactions spark the ideas you're writing about. Good Company isn't a screed or a manifesto, it's a fictional expression of my own recent deep dive into the sources of my own internalized misogyny and my complicity in the way certain men have treated me all my life. 

Q: What does the term “good company” mean?

A: In the context of the novel, the term “good company” means the kind of woman who isn’t needy, who never complains or criticizes, who takes it on the chin like one of the boys, no matter how sexist the jokes are, no matter how demeaned she feels. The price of admission to the club is to be the Hemingway dream girl, as I've always called it to myself. Hard-boiled, hard drinking, no trouble, nothing but fun. 

The other, hidden price of admission is a loss of self-respect. But all you have to do to get that back is to leave quietly and never enter those rooms again, relinquish the need for male approval, get out of the female dance of judgment and competitiveness, move through it all toward real connection. 

Q: Good Company is set at a writing festival over the course of a weekend, but the chapters in real time are interspersed with excerpts from the memoir your protagonist, Julia, is there to promote. You published a memoir in 2011, fifteen years ago. How did your own experience of writing Blue Plate Special inform Julia's in the novel?

A: Ever since I published Blue Plate Special, I've been aware of how much I had to leave out, how curated the memories were, no matter how real and honest they might have felt. This was partially because I was writing about a lot of people who were still alive; I had to couch the truth. But also, memory is a tricky, slippery thing, largely subjective, unlike the fictional imagination, which has an authority that cannot be denied or argued with.

I can be so much more honest in fiction than memoir. In my novels, I've always written about my family, exes, former friends, people who've done me wrong, people I've loved. But I used those relationships as springboards into wholly invented, fictional characters. This allows me to tell the truth in a way that doesn't feel dangerous. 

There’s always a tension in a memoir between what’s told and what’s left out. In Good COMPANY, I used Julia’s memoir excerpts to inform the present of the novel. She’s more brutally honest in her memoir than I was in mine, but she has blind spots. She's not entirely aware of all the forces at play in her life, her own part in the dance of her relationships, and that was the point of including the chunks of her memoir, to illuminate her present-day life.

Q: How much of your own life did you draw on for this novel?

A: It’s true: Julia is a middle-aged female novelist whose life and professional trajectory bear a glancing resemblance to my own. I used some of my own experiences in creating the tension between her memoir and her life; I felt that same tension in my fifties following the publication of Blue Plate Special. But I also made a lot of things up, created composites of real-life people, invented others. And ultimately, the great joy of writing this novel was that It's not about me.

Q: There's something very raw and vulnerable about this book, as well as structurally risky. Was this a deliberate choice?

A: One of my early readers called this book “punk rock.” And I think that's true, in the sense that it might feel subversive and truth-telling. It wasn’t a choice; the book demanded to be written like this. The style emerged organically in a way that felt very natural to me, without deliberate artifice or stylistic irony.

I wanted to show a woman at a moment of both personal and professional crisis, rooted in the present but informed by the past. And to do that, I had to figuratively open a vein and let it flow onto the page. It felt cathartic, but it also felt scary in a whole new way. It's a new kind of book for me. And yes, it felt very risky, but I needed to write this book for so many reasons. 

Q: What are you hoping readers will take away from this book? 

A: I hope readers will relate to Julia, even if they don't always approve of her or even like her. By this, I mean that I hope they see some of their own experiences in hers and recognize her struggles. I've watched two “waves” of feminism rise and die. I watched the #MeToo movement ignite and become extinguished. Two of the most qualified presidential candidates in American history, both women, were recently defeated by a serial sexual predator. And through all of this, not very much has changed for women. In fact, things are getting worse for us. We need to talk about this. We need to talk about misogyny, including the ways in which we’re complicit. 

Most of all, I hope readers are moved and provoked and affected by this book.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Photo Credit: Cheryl Nichols 

Kate Christensen's most recent novel is Good Company.

As Sydney Graves, she writes the Jo Bailen detective series and has just completed Saguaro City, the second installment.

Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has also published two food-centric memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, which won the Maine Literary Award for Memoir.

She lives with her husband and their two dogs in northern New Mexico. 

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