Geneva

This fast-paced debut takes on the world of biotechnology, focusing more on the attendant politics and celebrity than the tech itself. The celebrity in question is Professor Sarah Collier, who’s retired after winning a Nobel Prize. She’s so reclusive that she didn’t even pick up her Nobel in person, but her husband is desperate for her to get back out there and help his faltering neuroscience career. He’s increasingly frustrated by her unwillingness to travel with him to Geneva, where a mysterious new technology will be unveiled at the Schiller Institute, with, the institute hopes, Sarah’s endorsement. The promise that the new technology could help Sarah’s newly diagnosed Alzheimer’s makes the endorsement tempting, but steely pressure from the institute’s directors and its frightening head of security is exhausting. As Sarah becomes ever more forgetful and disoriented, the risks to her marriage and even her life multiply while the billions of dollars on the line make malevolent forces ruthless. For fans of actor-author Armitage and of John Marr’s biotech-infused thrillers.