The Delusion

"IT WAS AMAZING!!... The Delusion is an immersive, thought provoking journey of the beautiful yet destructive conductivity the internet can become. " Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. It’ll drive you crazy. Literally.

Hotel ballroom lights flicker as the University of Baltimore announces the winner of this year’s Tiberian Research Award in Psychology. Years of toil and sacrifice weigh on Emma’s shoulders. Years of enduring her professor’s unearthly demands. Years of researching mass persuasion on the internet late into the night, living in a single-bedroom apartment on campus while her friends moved away and started families.

Years spent watching her mother die of cancer before Emma could give her the grandchildren she wanted.

Years.

But it all ends tonight.

Just not the way Emma thought it would . . .

When her professor suddenly goes missing, she realizes the power of her research. The power of persuasion. Gaslighting on a global scale.

Now, she must rescue her professor before sinister forces use her research to take over the minds of everyone on social media. And, because everyone is on social media, we’re all at risk. Look at your cell phone. Open your favorite social media app. Post pictures of your cat and catch up with trusted friends, but don’t doomscroll. Don’t believe everything you read.

That’s what he wants you to do.


This thought provoking technothriller is perfect for fans of Blake Crouch’s Recursion and Ruth Ware’s The Turn of the Key.

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"Fastpaced and jam-packed with action." ★★★★★ - Readers' Favorite

"A page-turning technothriller with high suspense and intrigue." - The Prairies Book Review

"Technically detailed, perfectly paced, and psychologically gripping." ★★★★★ - Indies Today

T.O. Paine writes award-winning psychological and crime thrillers that keep you up all night. Some of it comes from imagination. Some of it comes from the four years his family spent inside a cult — an experience that lends his fiction an unsettling authenticity readers can feel.

His novels, including The Teaching, The Abduction, and The Crisis, have been honored by the Chanticleer Global Thriller Awards, Literary Titan, BookLife, and Readers' Favorite. He is a member of International Thriller Writers, the Crime Writers' Association, and Sisters in Crime, and holds a master's degree in computer information systems.

When he isn't writing, Paine is usually running — he has finished a marathon in all fifty states and is working through all fifty a second time, and he has survived an IRONMAN, twice. He lives in Colorado with his wife and shares his office with two rescue dogs he calls his muses. Chaz, a pampered cocker spaniel with strong opinions about cookies, and Muñeca, a street dog he brought home from Mexico who, he swears, keeps the bad people in his books away from him so he can write.

Get free stories at topaine.com.