The Nightshade Project

Donna, Steph and Will are ordinary teenagers, but with a silicon chip brain implant as her eighteenth birthday present, is it Donna who is coming of age or the entire world?

Adam Colton mixes surrealism, comedy, horror and teenage drama in this eclectic new novel, which touches all bases when it comes to modern concerns from climate change to virtual reality. Three young friends become unwilling guinea pigs in the government's surveillance programme. What should be a time of celebration and discovering adulthood becomes a time of existential angst as an outside force hacks directly into Donna's mind.

The author says, "I wanted throw everything but the kitchen sink into this novel." Donna's favourite comedian seems to preempt the action with his routines, but is it all too much for her young mind to take in? And can the truth about the human race be discovered before she loses her grip on reality?