Thomas Hunter narrowly survives a shooting attempt only to awaken in an alternate universe of green forests, a world to which he subsequently travels every time he goes to sleep.

Immersing himself in a technological virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty, and disease, Wade Watts joins an increasingly violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world's creator. It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you...

Michael used to live to game, but the games he was playing have become all too real. Only weeks ago, sinking into the Sleep was fun. The VirtNet combined the most cutting-edge technology and the most sophisticated gaming for a full mind-body experience. But now every time Michael sinks, he risks his life. The VirtNet has become a world of deadly consequences, and Kaine grows stronger by the day. The Mortality Doctrine—Kaine’s master plan—has...

"Fifteen years from now, a new virus sweeps the globe. 95% of those afflicted experience nothing worse than fever and headaches. Four percent suffer acute meningitis, creating the largest medical crisis in history. And one percent find themselves "locked in"--fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. One per cent doesn't seem like a lot. But in the United States, that's 1.7 million people "locked in"... including the President's...

Michael completed the Path. What he found at the end turned everything he'd ever known about his life -- and the world -- completely upside down. But it was the only way VirtNet Security knew to find the cyber-terrorist Kaine -- and to make the Sleep safe for gamers once again. Kaine is a tangent, a computer program that has become sentient. And Michael's completing the Path was the first stage in turning Kaine's master plan, the Mortality Doctrine,...

When his own high-tech start up turns into a Fortune 500 computer gaming group, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family who has amassed an illegal fortune, finds the line between fantasy and reality becoming blurred when a virtual war for dominance is triggered.

Isobel is the Queen of the medieval rave-themed VR game Sparkle Dungeon. Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of "power morphemes"―unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when skilfully pronounced. But Isobel’s reputation makes her the target of a strange resistance movement led by spellcasting anarchists, who may be the only thing stopping the cabal from toppling California over the edge of...

Bart Minnock, founder of the computer gaming giant U-Play, enters his private playroom and assumes the role of a sword-wielding warrior king, in his company's latest top-secret project, Fantastical. The next morning he is found in the same locked room, in a pool of blood, his head separated from his body. NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas is having as much trouble figuring out how Minnock was murdered as who did the murding. Eve and her team are about to...

A computer programmer falls in love with an artificial intelligence and when the intelligence dies follows her to the world of the dead. He obtains her release in exchange for which the couple will give up their first child, needed by the world of the dead for a special project.

In his ongoing battle to save Earth and its parallel worlds from the demon Saint Dane, fifteen-year-old Bobby Pendragon travels to Veelox, a world whose inhabitants have abandoned their real lives in favor of virtual reality.