Overview

*An up-all-night slice of Halloween horror, perfect for fans of Stephen King, Black Mirror, and Frankenstein* 'Best thing I've read this year . . . Just superb. Unsettling in the most beautiful way' Will Dean, author of The Last Passenger 'Probes at the fears for our future and provokes the terrors of our pasts . . . terrifying' Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies Henry, a brilliant but reclusive engineer, has achieved the crowning discovery of his career: he's created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He names the half-formed robot William. But there's something strange about William. It's not that his skin feels like balloon rubber and is the colour of curdled milk, nor is it his thick gurgling laugh or the way his tongue curls towards his crooked top teeth. It is the way he looks at Henry's wife, Lily. Henry created William but he is starting to lose control of him. As William's fixation with Lily grows and threatens to bring harm to their house, Henry has no choice but to destroy William. But William isn't gone. Filled with jealousy for humanity, for its capacity to love and create life, William starts to haunt the house. He lurks behind each locked door. You can hear him muttering in the eaves of the attic. He is whispering in Henry's head. And he will be the one to take control . . . William is a new kind of ghost story, where the haunting is not from another world, but from inside your home. Inside your head . . . 'A gauntlet of thrills and surprises' Gus Moreno, author of This Thing Between Us 'From its first page all the way to its jaw-dropping ending, William had me hooked' Nick Cutter, author of The Troop and The Deep 'A gripping page-turner that makes you think' Araminta Hall, author of One of the Good Guys

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9781399812757

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Reviews

A smart home turns into a house of horrors in this suspenseful outing from Coile . . . Coile expertly imagines the sort of ghoulish snares a cybernetic environment could spring upon its unprepared captives and throws in a late-inning explanation for the source of William's apparent sociopathy that is as believable as it is chilling. It's a frightening Frankenstein fable for the age of AI * Publishers Weekly * Moments of this cinematic tale truly terrify . . . Coile maximises his premise's inherent tension using nightmare imagery and an uneasy third-person-present narration shot through with powerlessness, paranoia, and dread. Gleefully lurid fun -- Kirkus Coile locks you in the smart home of your nightmares, and inside is a gauntlet of thrills and surprises that'll have you looking over your shoulder till the very end. If reading with one hand over your mouth is your thing, this is the book for you -- Gus Moreno, author of THIS THING BETWEEN US From its first page all the way to its jaw-dropping ending, William had me hooked. I mainlined this book in one sitting, loving the tragically endearing protagonist Coile had created while marvelling at the whip-smart plotting -- Nick Cutter, author of THE TROOP and THE DEEP A gripping page-turner that makes you think, William gets you by the throat and doesn't let go until it has spun you through some of your darkest fears. Mason Coile has written a modern-day Frankenstein for our digital age that grapples with the notion of consciousness and what makes a human -- Araminta Hall, author of ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS A deliciously terrifying book about creation and its false promise of control, William exposes the harrowing consequences of playing god. Coile demolishes the idea that our homes and identities are safe in a fully automated world. I dare you to read this in more than one sitting -- Ling Ling Huang, author of NATURAL BEAUTY Dark, clever, and terrifying, I devoured Coile's novel. If you're not afraid of AI now, you will be after William -- Robyn Harding, author of THE DROWNING WOMAN Mason Coile's William is twisted, timely, scarily intelligent, and menacing even before it reveals its greatest, darkest secrets -- Jonny Compton, author of THE SPITE HOUSE A book that probes at the fears for our future and provokes the terrors of our pasts - William asks, if the things we make reflect us, what does that say about what we are? Also - it's f***ing terrifying -- Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of THE DANCE TREE I read and enjoyed William in a single sitting, as if it were a story from a classic horror comic, or a new episode in a favourite film franchise at Halloween. Impressive horror as entertainment, yet twinned with insights into male identity and original speculations on the consequences of playing God with tech -- Adam Nevill, author of ALL THE FIENDS OF HELL

Coile locks you in the smart home of your nightmares, and inside is a gauntlet of thrills and surprises that'll have you looking over your shoulder till the very end. If reading with one hand over your mouth is your thing, this is the book for you * Gus Moreno, author of THIS THING BETWEEN US * From its first page all the way to its jaw-dropping ending, William had me hooked. I mainlined this book in one sitting, loving the tragically endearing protagonist Coile had created while marvelling at the whip-smart plotting * Nick Cutter, author of THE TROOP AND THE DEEP * Praise for Mason Coile-- One of the most talented successors to Stephen King * Daily Mail * A smart, thrilling, utterly unnerving novel -- Gillian Flynn, author of GONE GIRL on THE DEMONOLOGIST One of the most exciting works of fiction I've read for some time -- Kate Mosse, author of THE GHOST SHIP on THE DEMONOLOGIST Genuinely terrifying, don't-read-late-at-night stuff. Thrilling, compelling and beautifully written -- SJ Watson, bestselling author of BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP on THE HOMECOMING Richly crafted, deliriously scary and compulsively page-turning from beginning to end -- Jeffrey Deaver, author of THE BONE COLLECTOR on THE DEMONOLOGIST Remarkable and compelling * The Times on The Lost Girls *

Coile locks you in the smart home of your nightmares, and inside is a gauntlet of thrills and surprises that'll have you looking over your shoulder till the very end. If reading with one hand over your mouth is your thing, this is the book for you * Gus Moreno, author of THIS THING BETWEEN US * From its first page all the way to its jaw-dropping ending, William had me hooked. I mainlined this book in one sitting, loving the tragically endearing protagonist Coile had created while marvelling at the whip-smart plotting * Nick Cutter, author of THE TROOP AND THE DEEP *

Author Information

Mason Coile is a pseudonym of Andrew Pyper, the award-winning author of ten novels including The Demonologist, which won the International Thriller Writers Award, and Lost Girls, which was a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book of the Year. Both Coile and Pyper live in Toronto.

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