Zugzwang

In chess, zugzwang is the position where every available move makes things worse.

Dr. Otto Retto has spent his career listening to other people's problems-and deciding what is wrong with them. Now he wants to prove something darker: that reality can be manufactured, evidence can be arranged, and a person can be made to play the villain.

Terry the Terrible is a failing magician who discovers that audiences do not want tricks. They want to believe. When he asks them to name his cat, the question becomes a trap no one can escape.

Amy reads the books she is told to read, feels what she is supposed to feel, and gives the expected rating. But when the story ends, she begins to wonder whether she has been living her own life-or following someone else's script.

Woven together with hidden patterns, recurring names, withheld endings, and a narrator who may know more than he admits, Zugzwang is a sharp, unsettling exploration of persuasion, confirmation bias, free will, and the stories we mistake for truth.

You may think you are reading this book. But perhaps the book is reading you.