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In the Algorithm We Trust
In In the Algorithm We Trust, Ryan David Ginsberg imagines a future America where artificial intelligence has become the organizing force behind nearly every aspect of human existence. Under the leadership of Lamar T. Haddington, founder of the Algorithmic Corporation, the nation has embraced a system that promises happiness, security, prosperity, and perfect relationships. Every citizen wears a Data Gathering Device that continuously monitors their experiences, allowing the Algorithm to determine their education, career, friendships, romantic partners, and daily activities. The novel follows Hugo Rodríguez, whose life begins under the Algorithm’s supervision and unfolds within a society convinced that technological advancement has solved humanity’s most persistent problems. Through Hugo’s experiences, Ginsberg constructs a disturbing portrait of a civilization in which personal fulfillment has become a carefully engineered product and unquestioning obedience is considered an essential part of a successful life.
Ginsberg presents an America filled with automated transportation networks, personalized entertainment, drone deliveries, meticulously designed cities, and technology capable of anticipating individual needs. These developments create an environment of extraordinary convenience, but they’re also inseparable from a system of constant surveillance and behavioral conditioning. The Algorithm’s influence extends into education, where children receive personalized instruction designed to shape their understanding of history, morality, and citizenship. Public celebrations, artistic performances, and recreational activities reinforce the same carefully constructed worldview. The recurring declaration, “FOR ALL TO BE PERFECT, ALL IMPERFECTIONS MUST BE ELIMINATED,” captures the philosophy underlying this society. Ginsberg is particularly effective at illustrating how authoritarian control can become embedded in ordinary routines, especially when people have been taught from birth to associate obedience with happiness and technological oversight with benevolence.
Hugo provides an engaging perspective through which to examine the novel’s central concerns. Raised to trust the Algorithm without hesitation, he approaches the world with genuine enthusiasm, accepting its judgments as expressions of scientific certainty. His relationships, educational experiences, professional ambitions, and expectations of love are all shaped by a system that claims to understand him more completely than he understands himself. This characterization gives the novel much of its unsettling power. Ginsberg frequently contrasts Hugo’s sincere emotional responses with the troubling implications of the circumstances surrounding them, creating moments of sharp irony and dark humor. The repeated assurance that “Only the Algorithm knows” becomes especially significant as the narrative explores the boundaries between knowledge, faith, and personal identity. The writing often employs repetition, extravagant descriptions, and exaggerated expressions of gratitude to reproduce the language of institutional propaganda. This approach makes the novel’s message emphatic, but it also contributes to the oppressive atmosphere of a society saturated with ideological messaging.
Beyond its technological premise, In the Algorithm We Trust is a pointed examination of authority, conformity, and the human desire for certainty. Ginsberg explores the appeal of a world where difficult decisions can be delegated to an apparently infallible system, while raising uncomfortable questions about the consequences of surrendering independent judgment. The novel also considers how political power, corporate influence, entertainment, and education can operate together to sustain a shared understanding of reality. Its treatment of romance and compatibility is particularly thought-provoking, examining what happens when intimate human experiences are subjected to mathematical optimization. The combination of speculative technology, political satire, and psychological conditioning gives the story a recognizable connection to contemporary debates about artificial intelligence, personal data, and institutional trust. Ambitious in scope and deliberately provocative in its execution, In the Algorithm We Trust offers a memorable exploration of the relationship between technological progress and human freedom, encouraging readers to consider who defines perfection and what individuals sacrifice when they allow someone else to define it for them.
Pages: 246 | ASIN : B0FGFPCSN3
A Good Place To End
The Romanov Legacy III: Return of the Tsar reimagines the survival of Alexei and Anastasia Romanov as they navigate exile, forbidden identities, Soviet assassins, and the dangerous possibility of restoring Russia’s fallen monarchy. How did your vision for The Romanov Legacy evolve as you developed the story across three books?
I had the general concept in mind from the beginning when I wrote the first draft as a single novel that served as the basis for this work. I had to imagine how such a scenario would unfold. One of the mysteries of the historical accounts of the assassination of the family left them in Yekaterinburg, all dead, but in reality, not all the bodies were found after the assassination. One of the obstacles for the Romanov followers was that if they rescued the family, how would they get them out of the country given the location of their final days? My research showed that the final order by Lenin to execute them happened because the White Army was approaching Yekaterinburg from the west and would soon overrun the city. The Bolsheviks couldn’t risk them falling into the hands of the white Army. So there was an opportunity for a rescue. I had to come up with a reasonable alternative to the historical end. But then where would they go? It turned out historically that a few of them could be extracted and then find safety with the White Army nearby.
How has Alexei’s character evolved throughout the trilogy, particularly as he prepares for the possibility of becoming Tsar?
Alexei was quite young at the beginning of the story, but he had to grow up quickly due to his circumstances. I attempt to show how he would mature rapidly under such conditions. Across the three volumes, I attempt to show how he would grow into the role of a young leader, gaining skills and insight as he traveled east. He had to overcome great odds which gave him impetus to become the leader he is by the end of the story.
How does the novel explore the relationship between inherited authority and the responsibility to earn the trust of others?
As he grew up he had the chance to observe how his father failed during the end of WWI and the capture of the family. He learned from his father’s mistakes to rely on others for advice and to learn from people in all walks of life. He was not brought up in the same aloof and isolated life his father experienced, in which he did not mix with his people. He learned to listen to others and learn from their counsel.
Now that The Romanov Legacy trilogy is complete, are there other historical events or alternate-history possibilities you would like to explore in future writing?
Of course. I considered whether to continue the series with further exploits of the tsar and his family but decided this was a good place to end the tale. But I had several other projects to work on. On another historical fiction story I’ve been working on since then, also set in Russia in the 1970s, is Lena’s Secret War, a thriller of another kind.
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The dark shadow of the Bolsheviks stretches across Europe. The Cheka—reborn as the ruthless NKVD—dispatches assassins to hunt down every last remnant of the old Russia. Maxim Petrov, guardian of the Tsar’s legacy, uncovers a chilling threat: the “Kremlin List,” a secret roster of enemies the Soviet state is determined to erase.
Amid the darkness, a spark of hope emerges. Alexei learns that Katya, his long-lost love, believed lost to war, is alive in Paris. With her survival comes renewed belief that one day he may reclaim his birthright—and rise as the new Tsar of All Russia.
Book 3 of 3. All are available now.
The Romanov Legacy III: Return of the Tsar
Fred G. Baker’s The Romanov Legacy III: Return of the Tsar imagines a future for Alexei and Anastasia Romanov in the unsettled years following the Russian Revolution. Living under assumed identities, they’re trying to establish lives in England while people around them keep the possibility of a restored monarchy alive. It’s an alternate history novel that combines Russian historical fiction, an espionage thriller, and a family saga, with each strand influencing the others. London and Paris provide a lively setting of banks, university life, social gatherings, and émigré communities. Beneath those comfortable surroundings, security is a constant concern. Even a friendly introduction or an evening out can involve calculations about trust, and that tension gives the book its particular appeal.
Alexei’s development is especially interesting because Baker spends time on the practical education of a potential ruler. Banking, negotiation, and responsibility become part of his daily life alongside friendships and romantic attachments. He’s earnest, sometimes impatient, and capable of letting his emotions get ahead of his judgment, which gives his royal position a human dimension. Anastasia, often called Annie, brings intelligence and ambition to her own career and relationships. The people supporting them matter just as much. Kasimir’s protective instincts and Anna’s compassion help create a household with genuine affection, while Maxim Petrov’s combination of financial expertise, strategic thinking, and personal devotion makes him a particularly engaging presence. Their shared meals, teasing conversations, and concern for one another give the larger political story an emotional foundation.
The espionage fiction element grows from the difficulty of protecting that household in a world of informants, covert organizations, and competing loyalties. Baker takes an interest in how intelligence networks operate: who knows what, how information travels, and how a small discovery can change a security plan. Those details make the historical thriller feel rooted in preparation and coordination. The action is forceful and frequently brutal, giving the characters’ fears a physical urgency. Extended briefings and explanations lend some sections a measured pace, and readers who enjoy the mechanics of clandestine operations will have plenty to consider. The narration also has a firmly royalist viewpoint, with deep sympathy for the exiles and fierce hostility toward the Bolshevik regime. That perspective shapes both the story’s emotional intensity and its clear divisions between allies and enemies.
As the third installment in the series, The Romanov Legacy III: Return of the Tsar carries the weight of a long shared history. References to earlier experiences explain why these characters trust one another so deeply, and the book rewards an interest in their continuing lives. The everyday details are a substantial part of the experience, from learning a profession to navigating courtship and finding ways to help displaced countrymen. I found the connection between those personal concerns and the demands of leadership especially appealing. Baker gives the idea of a royal legacy a practical meaning through money, service, education, and loyalty. For readers drawn to alternate history fiction with sustained relationships, political intrigue, and an extended family’s hopes for its homeland, this is an absorbing continuation with a strong sense of purpose.
Pages: 269 | ASIN : B0HJ6LK39T
The Aging Code
Robert J. McCunney’s The Aging Code takes a familiar question- why some people live longer than others- and builds a medical thriller around the unsettling possibilities behind it. Anna Carlson, a health journalist at the New York Times, is investigating the science of aging while her partner, Dr. Dan Murphy, settles into a position at the United Nations medical clinic. Their work draws them toward troubling medical questions and the political tensions surrounding Russia’s war against Ukraine. A separate storyline follows a Russian geneticist navigating the dangers of leaving his country. Together, these perspectives give the novel a broad scope, with scientific discovery, professional responsibility, and international intrigue all competing for attention.
The science is a substantial part of the reading experience. McCunney spends considerable time on genetics, gene therapy, premature aging, and the communities known as Blue Zones, where unusually long lives invite closer study. Anna’s interviews with researchers give readers a way into these subjects through questions they might ask themselves. There’s an appealing curiosity to her reporting, especially when she considers how laboratory findings might affect actual families. The book also keeps returning to the difference between living longer and enjoying those additional years in good health. That interest gives this medical mystery a meaningful center. Some conversations become lengthy explanations, and readers who enjoy learning alongside the characters will have plenty to consider. Those passages establish a measured pace as the investigation develops.
Anna and Dan’s relationship was very compelling for me. They encourage each other, compare ideas over meals, and bring different professional skills to the same emerging questions. Their affection is expressed frequently, giving their working partnership a strong personal foundation. The scenes involving a worried mother and her young son are especially effective at bringing the discussion of aging into everyday life. A child’s enthusiasm for books, toys, and dogs makes the stakes feel immediate. Elsewhere, the Ukrainian characters bring the effects of war into conversations about family, displacement, and humanitarian support. McCunney also enjoys showing readers around his settings. Manhattan restaurants, London streets, Boston laboratories, and Sardinian villages receive enough attention to make travel and place part of the book’s personality.
As a political thriller, The Aging Code builds tension through competing interests, uncertain loyalties, and the risks that accompany sensitive research. The chapters move among several viewpoints, letting readers watch pressures develop in different locations. Its strongest feature is the connection between scientific ambition and the people whose lives could be changed by it. The writing is direct, with dialogue carrying much of the explanation and plot. Even so, the novel’s enthusiasm for medicine and its concern for vulnerable people give it a clear identity. Readers drawn to biomedical suspense, investigative partnerships, and fiction that makes room for substantial scientific discussion will find an ambitious combination here.
Pages: 404 | ASIN : B0H7QLV3TR
Personal Baggage
Bones of Black Saints follows two civil rights attorneys defending a young Black activist accused of shooting a white police officer while confronting racial injustice, police solidarity, and competing versions of truth in Durham, North Carolina. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I represented a young man named Carlos Riley in Durham. Bones of Black Saints is a fictionalized take on his trial.
How did you develop Zenko’s mixture of anxiety, humor, faith, intelligence, and self-doubt?
I wanted a passionate, committed trial attorney who struggled with mental health issues.
Why was it important to portray accomplished attorneys who also struggle with mental health?
I’ve grappled with my own mental health demons. Realistically presenting these issues was a goal of mine in this and in the series of other books, such as The Girl Wore a Hockey Helmet. We trial attorneys bring our personal baggage into the courtroom as much as we try to keep it out. Substance abuse, alcoholism, and depression disproportionately affect lawyers. That’s the reality. One of my clients was sent to Death Row in N.C. because he had a drunk trial attorney. After almost thirty years, the Governor commuted his sentence to life without parole.
What responsibility do you think fiction has when engaging with painful historical events?
Fiction can help us learn and make sense of racial injustice and prosecutorial misconduct. As a writer, I feel a responsibility to confront injustices of the past. That is the first step in combating such inequities in the future.
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Ingrained Preconceptions
When Songs of Children Filled the Air follows six lives on a collision course in an America consumed by post-9/11 fear, where one frightened teenager’s choice could either deepen the cycle of violence or interrupt it. What inspired you to imagine this particular alternate path for America after September 11?
I have honestly been surprised, pleasantly, that the fallout from 9/11 wasn’t more severe. Watching the towers fall, I expected something closer to the alternate history I created. Twenty-five years later, I wonder how we have grown, if we have grown, beyond learned and ingrained divisiveness. Beyond the high-level political and social impacts, I wanted to focus on the individual level and how the choices we make as a people are felt by the actual people.
How did you balance making Allison’s fear understandable while also showing how easily it hardens into prejudice?
When I write, I reach deep into myself and try to understand the human condition. Even the best of us are not immune to the societal “norms” surrounding us. I believe Allison’s blend of emotions and mixed reactions are completely human. It’s what she does with them that counts.
What research shaped your portrayal of Farid as both a Muslim American and an NYPD officer during a period of escalating distrust?
I have friends from Muslim backgrounds, some from countries of extremely limited freedoms. Being from Brooklyn myself, but not in New York on 9/11, I could relate to his situation. I have seen division between adjacent neighborhoods segregated by race and religion, and had friends involved in attacks for nothing more than walking down a street where they “didn’t belong.” I tried to make Farid somewhat sympathetic to the hatred he received, realizing that not everyone who is motivated by such powerfully ingrained preconceptions is themselves “evil.”
What do you hope readers take from the 2026 epilogue about the power and limits of individual acts of compassion?
Some readers might come away from Songs of Children feeling they are not powerless. We do not simply have to accept the world as it is, but even small acts can have impactful results. While these will not change the world, they can change a life, even if the only life affected is our own.
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On September 11, 2001, Allison’s husband dies in the North Tower. She survives only because a sleepless night made her late to her own office in the same complex. That accident of timing is the first of many that will bind her to a cable installer named Jake and a Muslim NYPD officer named Farid, as an America unrecognizable to any of them takes shape around them.
In this alternate history, the government’s response to the attacks does not stop at Afghanistan. It reaches into American cities, rounds up Muslim citizens into detainment camps, and eventually drops a nuclear bomb on a city called Bayt-al-Salam. Allison, Jake, and Farid form an unlikely household of survivors, hiding in a cemetery mansion and trying to protect two children from a country that has turned on itself.
A sixteen-year-old jihadist named Musa, smuggled from a training camp into the United States against his will, is moving toward them. He does not want to die. He does not want to kill. But the men who sent him are counting on him to do both.
Songs of Children opens at the moment of detonation and then steps back a full year to show how ordinary people on every side of an impossible conflict arrive at a single atrium in Philadelphia where one girl’s handwritten note may be the only thing that matters.
Order your copy today to experience this year that could have been.
A Sense of Perspective
Bathing With JFK follows a bored Houston lawyer whose youthful fascination with John F. Kennedy has left him longing for the kind of extraordinary, consequential life he imagines JFK led. What inspired the idea for this book, and where did Austin Grant first come from?
While much of the chaos captured in the book was manufactured, the bored lawyer/JFK-adoration parts were real. It is sort of where I was back then. When one is young, personal limitations that seem so self-evident in later years don’t even make a blip on the screen. Like Austin, in my 30s I was hoping for an escape of some sort, and starting Bathing With JFK seemed a potential exit route. Though, as is usually the case in life, it didn’t come to fruition until decades later, when I no longer needed an escape. Life.
The campaign in the novel is chaotic, excessive, and often ridiculous, but it also exposes how political campaigns actually operate. What aspects of political culture were you most interested in satirizing?
Primarily the difference between what a politician says in front of a camera and what they say behind it. I have known a few of them, and my advice is that if there is one you particularly look up to, avoid getting to know them.
Martin is one of the novel’s most loyal and compelling characters. What does Martin provide Austin that Austin cannot provide himself?
Martin provides Austin with a sense of perspective and a view of the future that is longer than the life of the present cocktail. I have had a friend much like Martin for over 50 years who, at appropriate junctures, has guided me and chided me. Austin’s clumsy expressions of love for his friend wrote themselves, as I’ve had many such feelings in my own life. (Although one of the inside, practical jokes of the book is that my real-life Martin was the one always meeting the girls while I stood around and for the most part watched.)
What does “living a big life” mean to you now, and has writing this novel changed your own understanding of what makes a life consequential?
Ironically, now in my 60s, living a big life means living a small one: fewer people, fewer events, fewer ambitions. As far as a consequential life, I’d go with surrounding yourself with the right people and seeing things, especially difficult things, through.
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Austin Grant has spent his life chasing the next thrill—booze, women, and just enough lunacy to keep boredom at bay. A trial lawyer with charm to spare and a lack of discipline to match, he’s never had much use for purpose—until a grudge against a powerful state senator pushes him into a race he has no business running.
What begins as revenge quickly spirals into a chaotic, no-holds-barred campaign filled with missteps, imbecility, and moments of surprising brilliance. As Austin stumbles toward something resembling conviction, he’s forced to confront the wreckage of his choices—and the people he’s hurt along the way.
Set against the sharp-edged backdrop of Texas politics, this is a story of mindless ego, casual recklessness, and perhaps second chances—where winning the race may mean losing everything that matters.
Bathing With JFK
Ken Wall’s Bathing With JFK is a sprawling political satire, legal comedy, and character-driven comic novel set in 1990s Texas. Its narrator, Austin Grant, is a bored Houston lawyer whose youthful fascination with John F. Kennedy has left him craving the kind of grand, consequential life he imagines JFK lived. Austin’s solution is to challenge entrenched state senator Buzz Laughlin, a conservative celebrity with deep pockets, a talent for spectacle, and a long memory. What follows is an unruly campaign filled with dirty tricks, disastrous appearances, false arrests, sexual complications, and enough alcohol to alarm a distillery. The book establishes Austin’s central contradiction early: he genuinely wants to live boldly and serve a purpose, but he’s spent years confusing appetite, attention, and performance with significance.
The novel is funniest when it turns campaigning into organized chaos. Austin’s team includes Martin, his brilliant and fiercely loyal lifelong friend; Sarah, the sharp-tongued strategist who rarely lets him escape his own foolishness; and Linc, whose enthusiasm produces its own memorable trouble. Their underfunded operation lurches from door-knocking humiliations to media ambushes while Buzz’s machine answers every setback with another attack, arrest, or strategically placed umbrella. Wall understands the theater of politics, particularly the gap between what candidates say, what consultants arrange, and what voters actually notice. The episodes are deliberately excessive, but they’re tied together by a perceptive idea: a campaign can reveal a person even while teaching that person how to conceal himself.
Austin’s voice drives this satirical comedy novel, and readers who enjoy shameless first-person narrators will find plenty to work with. He’s quick, observant, vulgar, self-dramatizing, and often much more perceptive about everyone else than he is about himself. His endless jokes create a breathless rhythm, though the book’s length and appetite for digression can make some comic routines feel extended beyond their strongest beat. Still, the humor gradually gains emotional weight through Austin’s relationships with Martin, Marie, and his father. Martin gives the story its warmest friendship, while Marie refuses to become a prize waiting at the end of Austin’s adventure. Her clear-eyed understanding of him keeps the romantic comedy elements grounded in consequence rather than wish fulfillment.
That consequence is what gives Bathing With JFK more staying power than its wildest scenes initially suggest. Austin enters the race hoping to become larger than life, wins through a mixture of luck, nerve, loyalty, and questionable tactics, then discovers that victory can arrive after the things that matter have already begun slipping away. The closing pages resist an easy redemption and land on a fittingly uneasy note, with Austin finally recognizing happiness and responsibility just a little too late. As a political fiction novel, legal satire, and boisterous story of male friendship and delayed adulthood, Bathing With JFK is profane, energetic, and unexpectedly melancholy. It’s ultimately about a man learning that living a big life and living a meaningful one aren’t automatically the same thing.
Pages: 479 | ASIN : B0H73MJLQS
