In Ezekiel Boone's The Mansion, a figure from the past invites Billy Safford and his wife, Emily, to run a secretive project in upstate New York. Sean Eagle, owner of Eagle Technologies (imagine Google and Apple put together), was once Billy's best friend and Emily's boyfriend. Years later, he is the richest man in the world, but still hasn't forgiven Billy for stealing the love of his life. Billy and Emily have been digging their way out of debt, and Sean's offer of work is impossible to refuse--especially since it pertains to an abandoned project the two men worked on a decade before: Nellie. Like Siri or Alexa on steroids, Nellie is a household super-helper who knows your whims before you have them. But something is dangerously wrong with her programming, and Sean can't fix it without his old friend.
Even with all the bells and whistles, The Mansion is at heart a haunted house story. Boone is fluent in modern conceptions of computer science, so Billy and Sean's discussions of Nellie feel authentic, but the descriptions of technology and programming are mostly window dressing for other specters on the prowl. Boone blurs the lines between imagination and reality almost from the very beginning, and once Billy and Emily arrive on the premises, things start to go bump in the night.
The Mansion is a wonderful update of a classic model: people with secrets stuck in an old house with its own checkered past. Luckily, Boone knows the tropes of that story well, and works to subvert them every chance he gets. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.