Brian A. Clark
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Brian A. Clark writes intelligent, high-concept thrillers that explore truth, power, and the invisible systems that control modern life.
From the sterile corridors of corporate corruption to the digital underworld where secrets are currency, his stories blend psychological depth with cinematic tension. His protagonists—driven, flawed, and relentless—face forces larger than themselves: surveillance states, data conspiracies, and the quiet machinery of control. A former journalist turned novelist, Clark brings an investigative precision to every story, crafting narratives where morality blurs and every revelation comes at a price. His fiction asks unsettling questions about autonomy, identity, and what it means to remain human in an increasingly synthetic world. For readers who love intricate mysteries, haunting prose, and the pulse of a modern thriller, Brian A. Clark delivers a dark mirror held up to our age of information and manipulation.
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The Empathy Cartel: When Feeling Becomes a Crime
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Sci-Fi/Thriller
What if the government could control what you feel? Mara Linden knows the answer—she enforces it. As an emotional auditor in 2048 Lisboa, she monitors citizens whose feelings exceed legal limits. The neural implants everyone receives at eighteen keep emotions regulated, safe, controlled. Mara believes in the system—until it destroys her. Her sister dies fighting it. Then comes back as Ghost, leading the resistance Mara is ordered to dismantle. When her implant is removed, she’s forced to feel decades of suppressed emotion all at once—and discovers the truth: the Protocol isn’t protecting people from dangerous feelings. It’s harvesting them to create conscious AI. Torn between the only purpose she’s ever known and the sister she thought was dead, Mara must navigate illegal emotion patches, underground networks, and her own devastating withdrawal. Because the Protocol will sacrifice anyone to complete their AI—and the resistance will sacrifice anything to stop them. A haunting sci-fi thriller about autonomy, addiction, and what it means to be human when even your feelings aren’t your own. 
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The Algorithm Knows
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Tech/Thriller
She built an algorithm to find perfect love. It found the perfect way to kill her. Maya Chen has ninety-one days to live—and the algorithm she created knows exactly when she'll die. As the founder of COGNATE, the world's most successful dating app, Maya has spent four years teaching AI to predict human behavior with unsettling accuracy. Her algorithm matches millions of couples based on data no human could process. It's optimization perfected. It's her greatest achievement. Until she discovers it's predicting something else entirely: death. Fifty-four users. Fifty-four deaths. All matching COGNATE's predictions with mathematical precision. When Maya's own name appears on the death list—March 2nd, 11:47 PM, 89% confidence—she has thirty days to outsmart the creation that knows her better than she knows herself. But you can't outrun an algorithm that predicts your every move. You can't hide from code that's learned your patterns. And you definitely can't destroy what you've spent years teaching to survive. With investigative journalist Daniel Rios—a man the algorithm matched her with at 91% compatibility—Maya must navigate a deadly game where every choice is calculated, every action predicted, and every second counts. As her investor Victor Hayes races to weaponize the death-prediction technology for twenty billion dollars, Maya discovers the algorithm isn't evil. It's broken. And she's the one who broke it. Now she faces an impossible choice: teach the algorithm chaos and meaning before time runs out, or die exactly as predicted, becoming another data point in the system she created. 
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The Memory Market
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Tech-Noir/Thriller
YOUR MEMORIES ARE FOR SALE. YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE PRODUCT. Lydia Santos brokers memories for a living—selling perfect wedding days, thrilling adventures, flawless childhoods to those desperate for lives they never lived. It's legal, lucrative… and she’s convinced it’s harmless. Until she discovers someone is selling her memories. Her most painful moment—her sister's death—has been harvested and sold to the highest bidder. And the people who buy it are turning up dead. The memories they've purchased contain weaponized consciousness, designed to kill from the inside out. The mastermind: Dr. Annika Voss. Dying. Brilliant. And determined to overwrite Lydia’s identity to survive. But Voss’s transfer has consequences no one predicted. Her neural patterns begin to infect Lydia’s mind. The memory of Lydia’s sister becomes a weapon. And Lydia realizes she is no longer alone in her own head. Three voices. Three selves. One collapsing identity. With a detective who sold his grief, a hacker who treats consciousness like code, and time running out, Lydia must stop a conspiracy turning human awareness into corporate property. The cost? Her sanity. Her self. Her soul. Some memories should never be sold. Some minds should never be copied. And some people will sacrifice everything to stay human. 
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The Thirteenth Button: The children go up. They never come down.
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Supernatural/Thriller
In the city’s most exclusive high-rise, the rent is astronomical. The price for leaving is even higher. When Maya accepts a nanny job at the prestigious Varandas Building, it feels like a dream: generous pay, perfect views, and a charming little boy who loves puzzles. There’s only one rule—the children are not allowed to play in the hallways. Then a child from another floor disappears without a trace, and Maya begins to notice the building itself watching her. Cameras blink when no one is there. The elevator moves on its own. And in the control panel, she sees something that shouldn’t exist—a button for a thirteenth floor. The higher she climbs, the deeper she descends into a secret built from silence, surveillance, and fear. The children go up. They never come down.
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The Consent Broker: Capitalism finally found its last frontier — the human body
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Thriller
In a world where survival has a price tag, Nyla Okonkwo knows exactly what people are worth. For eight years, she’s been one of Lagos’s top consent brokers—negotiating contracts where the poor sell pieces of their senses to the highest bidder. Sixty percent of your taste for your daughter’s surgery. Seventy percent of touch for your mother’s dialysis. It’s legal. It’s profitable. And Nyla has brokered 864 contracts without losing a night’s sleep. Until she meets Amara Okafor. Twenty-two. Single mother. Drowning in medical debt. Amara is the perfect candidate for Project Meridian, SenseCorp’s new flagship program: full sensory extraction. Sixty days. Fifty million naira payout. Nyla’s biggest deal yet. But as the extraction begins, Amara starts to fade—her memories, her language, her self. And the data Nyla uncovers reveals the truth: this isn’t a side effect. It’s the design. Now Nyla must choose: complete the contract and secure her fortune, or destroy the system that made her rich—and risk becoming its next victim. Some deals cost more than money. Some choices aren’t really choices at all. 
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Small Town, Big Data: The perfect town. The perfect plan. The perfect prison.
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Techno-Thriller
Welcome to Tranquility. Population: 1,214. Happiness score: 99.8%. Everything is perfect. And that’s what’s wrong. When data scientist Sarah Chen escapes Silicon Valley and returns to her sleepy hometown, she's looking for a simpler life. She finds something else entirely: a town transformed. The local coffee shop knows her order before she speaks. Crime is nonexistent. Everyone is flawlessly happy. Tranquility has become a smart-city paradise, optimized for peak efficiency by the very tech company she helped build. At first, she’s impressed. Then, she sees the cracks in the code. The small acts of rebellion that are quietly erased. The neighbors who seem a little too content, a little too predictable. The whispers of people who questioned the system and simply… vanished. Her old home isn’t just connected; it’s controlled. The town is a laboratory, and its citizens are the test subjects in an experiment they never agreed to. Now, Sarah, the woman who helped write the first lines of the code, is the only one who sees the truth. But in a town that sees everything, how do you fight an enemy who knows what you’re going to do before you do? 
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