Genesis Code — Jamie Metzl

The latest designer drug, Blue Magic, might explain the needle mark on the arm of a young woman found dead in her Kansas City apartment. But when Star reporter Rich Azadian digs deeper, the clues point to a far more explosive story: MaryLee Stock was a protégée of evangelical mega-pastor and power broker Cobalt Becker, who is poised to deliver his followers and the presidency to a firebrand right-wing senator in the next election. When Azadian sets out to prove that MaryLee's death was no accident and she may have been carrying Becker's baby, the stakes become life itself.

In 2023 America -- bankrupt, violently divided by culture wars, and beholden to archrival China -- the rules of the game are complicated. When the deaths of other young women appear to be connected to MaryLee's, the US Department of National Competitiveness moves in to quash the investigation. Azadian's only option is to go rogue, assemble a team of brilliant misfits like himself, and begin the fight of his life to find out who is killing these women and why, and whether any others like them may still be alive.