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Culpability

Oprah's Book Club Pick 2025

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Culpability

By: Bruce Holsinger
Narrated by: January LaVoy, Stacy Carolan
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"Compelling."―Literary Review

"An irresistibly anxious book."―The Washington Post

"A family drama with a shocking twist." ―The New York Times

"I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!"―Oprah Winfrey

When the Cassidy-Shaws' driverless minivan fatally collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver's seat. His father, Noah, is beside him, and in the back with his younger siblings is his mother, Lorelei—a renowned AI researcher—who is lost in her work.

During a weeklong retreat on the Chesapeake Bay, the Cassidy-Shaws wrestle with the moral fallout of the crash as a routine police enquiry starts to unravel. As Lorelei's increasingly odd behaviour stirs her husband's suspicions that there may be a darker truth behind the incident, the arrival of tech billionaire Daniel Monet (who has a mysterious history with Lorelei) cements them. When Charlie falls for Monet's teenage daughter, tensions among the Cassidy-Shaws reach breaking point.

A psychosocial thriller and a propulsive family drama, Culpability explores a world newly shaped by non-human forces such as chatbots and autonomous cars, and forces us to examine our own relationship to artificial intelligence, and the nuanced ways in which we are all, in fact, culpable.

©2025 Bruce Holsinger (P)2025 Europa Editions (UK) Ltd. Family Life Genre Fiction Psychological
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Critic reviews

"A thought-provoking and riveting meditation on family, parental love, morality and artificial intelligence—and where they all intersect. Wise, propulsive, and deeply powerful."
"Reminiscent of the work of Richard Powers and Don DeLillo, Culpability is a compelling narrative about the perils of the digital age."
"A beachy family drama with a shocking twist."

"The human race wakes every morning with a new worry, and among such anxieties at present is artificial intelligence. Bruce Holsinger's Culpability functions efficiently on a variety of levels as family drama, thriller and a sober examination of what current technological developments have in store for us."

" Culpability is a stark reminder of our vulnerability to AI and the dangers posed by omnipresent technology."
"Holsinger seems to have created his own subgenre of psychosocial thriller, spinning super-smart, propulsive page-turners out of zeitgeisty worries . . . If you are not already hooked on Holsinger, it's time to join the club."

"A thought-provoking and riveting meditation on family, parental love, morality and artificial intelligence—and where they all intersect."

"A wildly timely book, an exploration of the ethics of the technology age tucked inside a gripping story about family and loyalty."
"A thriller with a brain. Reminiscent of the work of Richard Powers and Don DeLillo, Culpability is a compelling narrative about the perils of the digital age while addressing the challenges of living as a family. This novel might feel futuristic, except it isn't. It's happening now."
"Whip-smart, fascinating, and gripping. It reads fast like a thriller, but this novel takes on the great cultural challenges of today: AI, electronic surveillance, and billionaire culture. A successful but fragile family collides with these forces and wrestles them down to life-size.
"Part family drama, part techno-thriller, this riveting novel traces the moral fallout of a self-driving car crash through the lens of a fractured family. With piercing insight and deep compassion, Holsinger captures the unsettling drift between human intention and algorithmic consequence—never losing sight of the fragile, fallible people at the heart of the story. Gripping, wise, and eerily prescient, Culpability is a family novel for the age of AI."

"Powerful and immensely thought-provoking. A novel with its finger absolutely on the pulse."
"In this tightly paced novel, domestic intrigue is transposed into the fraught world of AI. . . . This Zeitgeisty discussion is balanced with plenty of drama: as it turns out, the family vacation house is next to a compound owned by a shady tech billionaire—a discovery that unleashes a torrent of deception."
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Narrators are excellent and the novel is pacey and thought provoking. Would be interested to see what comes next from this author.

A superb balance of plot and insight.

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I had anticipated this book for a while and glad I got to read it. I think my expectations were more around AI and it's ethics. What I got from the book however was more around family dynamics which was quite intriguing, relatable! fragmented yet whole. I did expect a lot more exploration of the advancement of AI, it's unrealised extent and potential impact on life as we know it. Otherwise, it was enjoyable to read.

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A well written family drama that attempts to grapple with the issue of liability when a crisis occurs and AI may be at fault. Given the state of the world and where we seem to be going, this is an easy recommend

Culpability

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