Culpability / Bruce Holsinger.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Oprah's Book Club Pick * New Yorker Best Books of 2025 * 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlist * Kirkus Best Books of 2025 * Real Simple Best Books of 2025 * Washington Post Noteable Fiction 2025 * NPR's 2025 "Books We Love" * Minnesota Star Tribune 20 Best of 2025 * "I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!"--Oprah Winfrey

"The most of-the-moment novel I've read all year, and it's the book of the summer."-- Real Simple

"If you want an engaging novel sure to spark great discussion about that thorny [AI] future, this is it." -- Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"A gripping, impossibly timely thriller." --one of NPR's "Books We Love"

A suspenseful family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence.

When the Cassidy-Shaws' autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver's seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie's future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei's odd behavior tugs at Noah's suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident--suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet's teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Holsinger (The Displacements) plumbs moral responsibility in the age of AI in this twisty family drama. Seventeen-year-old lacrosse star Charlie Cassidy-Shaw is behind the wheel of the family's self-driving minivan, traveling with his parents and two younger sisters to a tournament, when they collide with another car, killing both passengers. Charlie and his family, however, sustain only minor injuries. In the aftermath, the family returns to a beach house on the Chesapeake Bay to recuperate. When the police hint that the car's digital forensics might point to Charlie's guilt, his lawyer father Noah retains a high-priced defense attorney, while his 13-year-old sister Alice texts with her AI-powered "friend" about a secret that would implicate Charlie in the crash, and the app pushes her to confess to their parents. The plot thickens when Charlie's mother, Lorelei, a prominent AI ethicist, spends time with their tech billionaire neighbor, prompting Noah to worry that she's having an affair (the truth turns out to be more nefarious). As each family member wrestles with their responsibility for the crash and how much trust they should put in AI, Holsinger grapples evocatively with the trade-offs of automated life. This timely tale leaves readers with much to chew on. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (July)

Kirkus Book Review

A family heading to their son's high school lacrosse game is thrown into chaos when their self-driving minivan is involved in a fatal accident. Medieval historian-turned-novelist Holsinger seems to have created his own subgenre of psychosocial thriller, spinning super-smart, propulsive page-turners out of zeitgeisty worries like ultracompetitive school admissions (The Gifted School, 2019), disaster relief (The Displacements, 2022), and now, to absolutely crushing effect, artificial intelligence. On the Cassidy-Shaw family's way to a weekend tournament on the Eastern Shore of Delaware, paterfamilias Noah is working on a legal memo in the front passenger seat; his 17-year-old son, Charlie, is at the wheel. In the back seat are Alice, 13; Izzy, 11; and their mom, Lorelei, a MacArthur "genius" grant winner who studies the ethical concerns raised by AI. And one is about to unfold before their very eyes when Alice suddenly screams, Charlie jerks the wheel, and they crash into a Honda Accord coming in the other direction. After this explosive opener, the complexities just keep coming--each person in the car has reason to believe the accident was really all their fault. Meanwhile, the Delaware state police have their own ideas about that, ones they continue to pursue even after the family retreats to a vacation rental on the Chesapeake Bay for a week. AI threads through the plot in so many fascinating ways--one of the kids is confiding all her secrets to a chatbot; the vacation rental is a smart house located across the cove from the over-the-top compound of a billionaire AI entrepreneur; a search-and-rescue is managed by drones; almost every time something bad happens, someone staring at a phone was involved. Cleverly threaded through the story are excerpts from Lorelei's monograph, "Silicon Souls: On the Culpability of Artificial Minds," that sharpen the philosophical and moral issues of the novel. If you are not already hooked on Holsinger, it's time to join the club. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.