Once upon a time, there were four of them. And though each was good at a number of things, all of them were very good at games... Dagmar is a game designer trapped in Jakarta in the middle of a revolution. The city is tearing itself apart around her and she needs to get out. Her boss Charlie has his own problems — 4.3 billion of them, to be precise, hidden in an off-shore account. Austin is the businessman—the VC. He's the one with the plan and the one to keep the geeks in line. BJ was there from the start, but while Charlie's star rose, BJ sank into the depths of customer service. He pads his hours at the call-center slaying on-line orcs, stealing your loot, and selling it on the internet. But when one of them is gunned down in a parking lot, the survivors become players in a very different kind of game. Caught between the dangerous worlds of the Russian Mafia and international finance, Dagmar must draw on all her resources—not least millions of online gamers—to track down the killer. In this near-future thriller, Walter Jon Williams weaves a pulse-pounding tale of intrigue, murder, and games where you don't get an extra life.

In THIS IS NOT A GAME, Dagmar found that the Alternate Reality Game she was writing was being manipulated by a killer, and in her own turn manipulated the game players in order to solve mysteries and unmask the villain. In the sequel DEEP STATE, that progression continues. Once again, the boundaries between game and reality are breached, and Dagmar finds herself using game techniques to manipulate real-world events. Except that the stakes have risen - instead of solving a crime, Dagmar now finds herself in the geopolitical realm, trying to manipulate an entire nation.As in TINAG, Dagmar finds herself drawn farther and farther into the action in order to set things right. She finds herself in physical danger, and must utilize her own inner strength and her ability as a game Puppetmaster to escape death.

Dagmar Shaw got out of the game... and into the movies. Sean is a washed-up child actor reduced to the lowest dregs of reality television to keep himself afloat. His life was a downward spiral of alcoholism, regret, and failure... until he met Dagmar. Except Sean has secrets, dark even for the Hollywood treadmill of abuse, addiction, and rehab. And Dagmar is a cipher. There are dark rumors about her past, the places she's been, the things she was involved in. People tend to die around her and now, she wants Sean for something. A movie, she says, but with her history, who's to say what her real game is?

Sean Makin was a washed-up child actor, until Dagmar Shaw made him a star. Now he's starring in a big-budget action thriller that offers him the chance to become a box-office titan. Except the action and the thrills aren't just in the movie. Dangerous and destabilizing new technology is floating around behind the scenes. Police and cartel lords lurk in the shadows. An assassin is on the loose, and has already claimed his first victim. Sean could be next in the killer's sights, unless he can find out what the bad guys want, who's hiding it, and how many people he's going to have to betray in order to save his life—- and more importantly, his celebrity!