What if someone could rewrite your entire life? Macmillan acquires second thriller from Blake Crouch

Wayne Brookes, Associate Publisher, Fiction, at Macmillan, has acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights to Recursion, a second sci-fi thriller by American author Blake Crouch, from David Hale-Smith and Alexis Hurley at Inkwell Management. Dark Matter, Crouch’s first novel for Macmillan was published in 2016 to critical acclaim, after being won at auction in January 2015

“My son has been erased.” Those are the last words the woman tells Barry Sutton, before she leaps from the Manhattan rooftop. Deeply unnerved, Barry begins to investigate her death, only to learn that this wasn’t an isolated case. All across the country, people are waking up to lives different than the ones they fell asleep to. Are they suffering from False Memory Syndrome, a mysterious, new disease that afflicts people with vivid memories of a life they never lived? Or is something far more sinister behind the fracturing of reality all around him?

Miles away, neuroscientist Helena Smith is developing a technology that allows us to preserve our most intense memories, and relive them. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent.

Barry’s search for the truth leads him on an impossible, astonishing journey, as he discovers that Helena’s work has yielded a terrifying gift—the ability not just to preserve memories, but to remake them…at the risk of destroying what it means to be human.

Wayne Brookes, Associate Publisher Fiction at Macmillan, said:

“Blake Crouch has it all. Not only does he write the most intense and suspenseful thrillers but he makes the incredible look credible, the unbelievable, believable. Recursion is an outstanding novel filled with thought-provoking twists and a deeply moving human story at its heart.”

Blake Crouch said:

“I am over-the-moon to be partnering once again with Wayne Brookes and Pan Macmillan to bring Recursion to my UK readers next summer. They are simply the best UK publishing partner I’ve ever had."

Pan Macmillan will publish the hardcover edition of Recursion in June 2019. The paperback will be published in January 2020.