The perfect last-minute gift Shop credit bundles
Connect by Julian Gough
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person opening a gift

The perfect last-minute gift

Audiobook credit bundles can be delivered instantly, given worldwide, and support local bookstores!

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Connect

A Novel

$27.50

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Robertson Dean

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 17 hours 46 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

“Read Connect by the absurdly brilliant Julian Gough—a mind-expanding techno-thriller with a hotly beating human heart.”
—Emma Donoghue, New York Times bestselling author of Room

In the Nevada desert, in the near future, a family crisis sets off a chain reaction that threatens to bring the networked world to its knees. It starts in the home of Naomi Chiang, a biologist and single mother struggling to balance her research with looking after her painfully awkward, homeschooled, ever-growing teenage son, Colt. Naomi worries about him constantly—he's so socially inept that he struggles to order takeout pizza—but then she has a major breakthrough at the lab that could change their lives, and America's future. For his part, Colt seems focused on one thing only: a globe-spanning immersive gameworld in which his phenomenal coding skills set him apart. But after his first real-life romantic encounter goes awry, he realizes mastery of a virtual existence is not enough.
     When Colt secretly releases his mother's latest findings, Naomi's worst fears come true. Colt's estranged father crashes into their lives again, backed by the secretive security organization he heads. The U.S. government wants Naomi's research . . . and Colt, who must leave the comfort of virtual reality to discover the pleasures, and pains, of a life fully lived. Meanwhile, Naomi has to decide how far she would go to protect her child. Would she kill a man? Would she destroy the world?
     Connect is a thrillingly smart novel of ideas that explores what connection—both human and otherwise—might be in a digital age. It is a story of mothers and sons; but it is also about you, your phone, and the future.

JULIAN GOUGH is the author of Juno & Juliet, Jude: Level 1, and Jude in London, as well as of the end poem for the hugely popular game Minecraft. He lives in Berlin.

Audiobook details

Author:

Narrator:
Robertson Dean

ISBN:
9781524755201

Length:
17 hours 46 minutes

Language:
English

Publisher:
Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group

Publication date:

Edition:
Unabridged

Illustration of person opening a gift

The perfect last-minute gift

Audiobook credit bundles can be delivered instantly, given worldwide, and support local bookstores!

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

“Instantly convincing . . . Powerful, playful . . . What feels so fresh is that this predictive novel avoids even a hint of the usual doomsday clichés. Instead, the transformative possibilities of technology are embraced to the point where ‘love is an interface between you and the universe’ comes to sound joyfully life-affirming rather than alarmingly clinical . . . Connect will subtly change the way you see the world.”
—Claire Lowdon, Sunday Times (London)
 
“Mayhem unfolds in the deadly but jaunty style of a Hollywood action thriller . . . A gonzo hybrid between The Matrix and Fifty Shades of Grey, written in its best moments with the pace and wit of Dave Eggers’s The Circle.”
Anthony Cummins, The Observer

"Propulsively paced and ingeniously twisting. Gough has written a hyperactive, adrenaline-junkie dystopian thriller that deserves to be made into a belter of a film franchise. As Colt would say: Wow, wow, wow."
—Laura Freeman, The Times (London)

"Connect imagines a world of systems within systems in which the alteration of a few human cells could have far-reaching and astounding effects on the universe. Recommended for those who enjoy near-future speculation coupled with an engaging and effective exploration of a fractured family."
Booklist

Connect really is a work of genius. It confronts and explores the nature of humanness and existence in a thrilling, immersive, addictive way, and marks Julian Gough out as a prophet among writers.’
—Donal Ryan, author of The Spinning Heart
 
“A wonderful novel, a tour de force.”
—Joseph O’Connor, author of The Thrill of It All and Star of the Sea Expand reviews
The perfect last-minute gift Shop credit bundles