William

Henry, who has agoraphobia, might be afraid to leave the house, but time spent in his lab has led to the breakthrough of his career—the development of a rapidly learning AI named William. Currently residing in a half-formed robotic body, William begins to resent his confinement in the lab. After Henry finally introduces William to his pregnant wife and her friends, they are all soon trapped in the house with a consciousness who has just learned that it likes to inflict pain. Coile (a pen name for Andrew Pyper, author of The Demonologist) makes the house feel haunted through his descriptions, but this book is also a wickedly fast cyber-thriller. Much of the action consists of William’s prisoners either dying horribly or testing their confines, a scenario that hearkens back to the trope where technology grows smarter and therefore more sinister.