The Lorelei Effect by Michael Alan British Arts Council YouWriteOn.com 2007 Book of the Year Award Winner "I'm the guy techies call when they run out of ideas - a hacker's hacker. The convoluted puzzles I squeeze into my mind make me feel not so much like a programmer as a computer therapist. I'm a modern day Columbus sailing the digital ocean, secretly worrying about falling off the edge and having to stare down the great turtle that holds everything together." Loner Cyrus Shepard gets a mysterious phone call in the middle of the night and next day finds himself in a government digital weapons lab. "My mother was a nurse. She taught me work comes first. My father was a chemistry teacher. He taught me curiosity. Stubbornness and insecurity I thought up on my own." Neuropsychiatrist Rebecca Jenkins leads a research program with catatonic patients. Her work moves to a secret lab in a turn of the century asylum for the insane where she encounters The Lorelei Effect. Cyrus and Rebecca reach inside each other to fight a discovery that threatens the very sanctity of the human spirit. Acclaim for The Lorelei Effect on YouWriteOn.com: "A blistering pace with devilishly clever twists that will keep you guessing every step of the way.
" "Far and away the best of close to 200 stories I've reviewed." "In a word: Wow!" "A great read...a gripping story with profound thematic resonance." "The story reaches out and swallows us up. No chance of escape." "In the niche of science-based thrillers as typified by Michael Crichton."