P.D. James meets Philip K. Dick in Barbara Ehrenreich's first novel, Kipper's Game, a complex mystery story set in an all-too-believable world of strange new diseases, genetic mutations and virtual reality. Ehrenreich's nonfiction books (The Hearts of Men, Fear of Falling, The Worst Years of Our Lives) are all wonderful, and now we have Kipper's Game, which pulls you right in: you know it's fiction, yet it's so damn plausible you suspect you may be reading the same story in the newspaper any day now.