Improbable is a 2005 science fiction thriller novel by Adam Fawer, about a gambler who gains the power to predict the future. It was awarded the 2006 International Thriller Writers Award for best first novel. [1]
Improbable is the story of a gifted young man named David Caine, who has been troubled by debilitating epileptic seizures to the extent that his medical condition has thrown his life completely off track. He is a compulsive gambler, and heavily in debt to the local mafia.
During the course of the novel, Caine undergoes an experimental medical treatment in an attempt to set his life straight. After the procedure, he discovers that he is able to make predictions using his enhanced calculative skills, and change the future based on his discoveries. However, shadowy forces want to use his power for their own ends, and he faces a desperate battle for survival.
A major aspect of the book which has received a good deal of praise is the unique cover art, which features a lenticular three-dimensional image which shifts as the book is moved in relation to the viewer. [2]
John Michael Crichton was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller and medical fiction genres, and heavily feature technology. His novels often explore technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and scientific background.
Gregory Dale Bear is an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work has covered themes of galactic conflict, artificial universes, consciousness and cultural practices, and accelerated evolution. His most recent work is the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear has written over 50 books in total. Greg Bear was also one of the five co-founders of the San Diego Comic-Con.
Leonard Cyril Deighton is a British author. His publications have included cookery books, history and military history, but he is best known for his spy novels.
John Holbrook Vance was an American mystery, fantasy, and science fiction writer. Though most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance, he also wrote several mystery novels under pen names.
Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers. He was shortlisted, in 1966 and 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. He was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize.
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has multiple subgenres, including detective fiction, courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focuses on crime investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
Robert James Sawyer is a Canadian science fiction writer. He has had 24 novels published and his short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Amazing Stories, On Spec, Nature, and numerous anthologies. He has won many writing awards, including the best-novel Nebula Award (1995), the best-novel Hugo Award (2003), the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (2006), the Robert A. Heinlein Award (2017), and more Aurora Awards than anyone else in history.
Frederick McCarthy Forsyth is an English novelist and journalist. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra and The Kill List.
The Forever War (1974) is a military science fiction novel by American author Joe Haldeman, telling the contemplative story about human soldiers fighting an interstellar war against an alien civilization known as the Taurans. It won the Nebula Award in 1975 and the Hugo and Locus awards in 1976. Forever Free (1999) and Forever Peace (1997) are respectively, direct and thematic sequel novels. The novella A Separate War (1999) is another sequel of sorts, occurring simultaneously with the final portion of The Forever War. Informally, the novels comprise The Forever War series; the novel also inspired a comic book and a board game. The Forever War is the first title in the SF Masterworks series.
Frank M. Robinson was an American science fiction and techno-thriller writer.
Herman Wouk was an American author best known for historical fiction such as The Caine Mutiny (1951) which won the Pulitzer Prize.
Christopher Priest is a British novelist and science fiction writer. His works include Fugue for a Darkening Island, The Inverted World, The Affirmation, The Glamour, The Prestige, and The Separation.
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College.
Robert David Reed is a Hugo Award-winning American science fiction author. He has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the Nebraska Wesleyan University. Reed is an "extraordinarily prolific" genre short-fiction writer with "Alone" being his 200th professional sale. His work regularly appears in Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Sci Fiction. He has also published eleven novels. As of 2010, Reed lived in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and daughter.
David Liss is an American writer of novels, essays and short fiction; more recently working also in comic books. He was born in New Jersey and grew up in South Florida. Liss received his BA degree from Syracuse University, an MA from Georgia State University and his M. Phil from Columbia University. He left his post-graduate studies of 18th Century British literature and unfinished dissertation to write full-time. "If things had not worked out with fiction, I probably would have kept to my graduate school career track and sought a job as a literature professor," he said. A full-time writer since 2010, Liss lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife and children.
Rachel Caine was the pen name of Roxanne Longstreet Conrad who was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, mystery, suspense, and horror novels.
Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
Peter J. James is a British writer of crime fiction. He was born in Brighton, the son of Cornelia James, the former glovemaker to Queen Elizabeth II.
Alexander Norman Berenson is an American writer and former journalist. He was a reporter for The New York Times and has authored several thriller novels and a book on corporate financial filings. His 2019 book Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence sparked controversy, earning denunciations from many in the scientific and medical communities.
Steven James is the author of more than forty books, including the critically acclaimed Bowers Files, an eleven-book series of psychological thrillers that consists of Opening Moves, Every Crooked Path, Every Deadly Kiss, Every Wicked Man, The Pawn, The Rook, The Knight, The Bishop, The Queen, The King, and Checkmate. The series has received four Christy Awards and numerous other honors.