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Start giftingViral
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreIn remote pockets of the Third World, a deadly virus is quietly sweeping through impoverished farming villages and shanty towns with frightening speed and potency. In West Africa, an undercover dissident journalist learns of an investment consortium planning to funnel billions of dollars into the continent. Before he can publicize details, he is savagely murdered. And in Washington, a three-word message left in a safe deposit box may be the thread that connects these seemingly unrelated incidents—if, that is, two brothers can decipher it before time runs out. Charles Mallory, a private intelligence contractor and former CIA operative, begins to discover the traces of a secret war, with a bold objective—to create a new, technologically advanced, and lucrative society in an unlikely region of Africa; a model civilization able to solve the age-old, seemingly insoluble problems that plague many Third World nations. With the help of his brother, Jon, can he break the story to the world before it is too late—before the "humane depopulation" takes place? As the stakes and strategies of this secret war become more evident, the Mallory brothers find themselves in a complex game of wits with an enemy they can't see: a new sort of superpower led by a brilliant, elusive tactician who believes that ends justify means.
James Lilliefors is an award-winning journalist who has written for the Washington Post, Miami Herald, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, and elsewhere. He attended the University of Iowa and the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns Fiction Writing Fellow. He currently lives in Florida.
Peter Berkrot, a forty-year veteran of stage and screen, has voiced over 450 audiobook titles, winning Earphones Awards, a 2012 Audie Award nomination, and a 2016 Audie Award.
Reviews
“Viral is a world-class thriller. It doesn’t get any more real than this. Lilliefors has created one of the most compelling novels of international espionage I’ve come across in a long time.”
“James Lilliefors, a brand new thriller writer on the scene, has opened with a bang with his first novel, Viral. With the Mallory brothers, Charles and Jon, the insanity that Jim has brilliantly portrayed becomes all too sharply urgent—and certainly timely. Hats off!”
“A crackling good story, so realistic that it’s scary. Lilliefors is right up there with the best thriller writers.”
“Fans of intelligently written page-turners will be rewarded.”
“An ambitious thriller; its villains, no ordinary terrorists, are determined to create a new world (even if it means wiping out a large portion of its population). Solidly plotted and featuring a unique pair of protagonists—you don’t often find a team of brothers as action heroes—the book is sure to appeal to fans of thrillers with Big Ideas and capital-V villains. A sequel is in the works, which is a good thing: readers will leave the book wanting to see more of Charles and Jon.”
“Lilliefors’ debut thriller doesn’t slow down until the last page…This one will keep you up at night.”
“Technologically modernizes Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.”
“Lilliefors provides enough twists to keep the pages turning. He also manages to develop and humanize his characters including some of the villains.”
“This cautionary tale can make your blood run cold…Lilliefors is an author to watch.”
“Software billionaires, media moguls, government henchmen, and a beautiful bio-chem warfare expert enter and exit the story in a whirl of action with all of it leading to a suspenseful race to stop a crime, the magnitude of which is off the scale.”
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