Xiphactinus

by Rich Shapero

Could embracing our darkest impulses be the ultimate path to authenticity?

Dun is a successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose meteoric rise in tech—against all odds—has brought him wealth and notoriety. He’s been ruthless in business and it’s paid off, but a powerful demon gnaws at his conscience, and a mounting cascade of litigation threatens both his livelihood and his life.

In this moment of crisis, a monstrous voice counsels him, interpreting with a strange mixture of affection and disdain the events that have led him here. Recalling their dark kinship from Dun’s early years through his dysfunctional childhood and career, this unlikely mentor urges him menacingly toward a stark awareness of his true nature, and the inner predatory resources he might summon to set himself free…

Shot through with black humor and page-turning suspense, Xiphactinus is a boldly unorthodox work of startling originality that reads as psychological thriller, scientific meditation, and poetic excavation of the human condition.

305 pages, Hardcover

Published October 15, 2025

About the author

Rich Shapero’s novels dare readers with giant metaphors, magnificent obsessions and potent ideas. His casts of idealistic lovers, laboring miners, and rebellious artists all rate ideas as paramount, more important than life itself. They traverse wild landscapes and visionary realms, imagining gods who in turn imagine them. Like the seekers themselves, readers grapple with revealing truths about human potential. All of his titles—Beneath Caaqi's Wings, Dissolve, Island Fruit Remedy, Balcony of Fog, Rin, Tongue and Dorner, Arms from the Sea, The Hope We Seek, Too Far and Wild Animus—are available in hardcover and as ebooks. They also combine music, visual art, animation and video in the TooFar Media app. Shapero spins provocative stories for the eyes, ears, and imagination.

Reviews

[Allison Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting read! I loved reading the physical book along with the App so I could see pictures of all the creatures. The metaphors were done very well

[mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

do not like reminds me of poetry. cannot finish.