Dreadnought — Stephen Greco

Spare, dry, and flecked with dark humor, Stephen Greco's Dreadnought centers on a fictional American corporation selling goods and services to a global youth market of a billion souls. Like Mount Fuji in Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views, the Dreadnought corporation - creator of "the biggest brand in history" - is visible directly or obliquely in each of these interrelated stories, which tell of who wins and who loses when young consumers and creative talent are stalked by a Big Brand of unprecedented power. Hint: Everybody loses - but the party's fun while it lasts. The novel's six tales are all set in New York's fast-lane of fashion, media, and the arts-populated chiefly by young people with more money, power, and influence than they know what to do with: "Forensics," "No Hat For Dinner," "Kate Neiring," "48 Huron Street," "The Demographer," and "General Everything."