Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

This book redefines the high-velocity thriller the way a movie like The French Connection or, years later, the film Ronin redefined the Hollywood car chase. Severance Package makes the action so visceral that other thrillers seem turgid by comparison.

But what's really amazing about this ride is how Duane Swierczynksi builds character, tells a story, and creates empathy in the midst of a novel that is really one continuous action sequence. There are no pauses in this novel, no catching of the breath, no time for reflection or internal monologues to fill in the blanks. The action starts on page one and escalates relentlessly until the breathless finish.

Anything Swierczynski writes is going to throw you back against the headrest, but this one never takes its foot off the accelerator. If you want a thriller that makes no apologies for being wildly entertaining, read this book.

Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse by Victor Gischler

This book reads like Kurt Vonnegut collaborating with William Gibson, maybe with a touch of Christopher Moore thrown in just to keep things off-balance. Go-Go Girls Of The Apocalypse is wildly entertaining, incredibly prescient, and deeply unsettling, even though you'll be smiling as you turn the pages and civilization crumbles between your fingers.

Victor Gischler is the adrenaline poet behind such crime classics as Gun Monkeys. If you haven't read him before, you are probably haunted by a feeling you've been missing out on something. Now's the time to fill that cultural gap with a book that's hard to categorize and impossible to put down.

Worried about the collapsing economy, ineffectual governments and the venal nature of mankind? This book will put it all in perspective and offer hope amidst the chaos and redemption for those brave enough to dive in headfirst. If you want to know how the world is going to end, and how it might begin anew, then read this book.