A Manhattan professor returns from a year in Oxford to find his life quietly unraveling. Someone has been in his apartment. His emails feel exposed. Surveillance cameras multiply on every corner. As paranoia tightens its grip, he's forced to confront the secrets he's kept buried — and the uncomfortable truth that privacy, once lost, may be impossible to reclaim. Patrick Flanery's taut psychological thriller dissects the surveillance state with the precision of a scalpel, asking whether we've already surrendered too much of ourselves without even noticing. The prose is controlled, unsettling, and deeply intelligent — this is literary fiction that doubles as a wake-up call. For fans of Dave Eggers' *The Circle* or anyone who's ever taped over their laptop camera and wondered if they're being paranoid or just paying attention.
