3. REAMDE by Neal Stephenson

I love Neal Stephenson and I love long books  (This one also clocked in at over 1000 pages!).

REAMDE is a computer virus that encrypts all of the users files and holds them hostage until a ransom is paid. And not the kind of ransom that is put in a briefcase and tossed off a bridge, but a ransom paid in an online game. So imagine hundreds, thousands of computers infected with this virus, and all of the users forced to pay a small ransom of in-game gold to the virus writer in exchange for the password.

That's the premise of the book, and so over the next 1000 cinematic and descriptive pages we meet an assortment of characters including Russian gangsters, Russian "security agents," hackers, jihadists, and gamers, all of whom wind up on one of the longest chase scenes in modern fiction!

I can't wait for the movie!