The 2002 horror/splatterpunk novella "100% Match" by Patrick C. Harrison III, aka PC3, is not for the squeamish as it falls into the subcategory of extreme horror. Some readers will say it's really not even horror, just disgusting, as it tells the tale of Bart, a fast-food franchise fry cook. You might see where that's going.
Bart is also lonely, overweight, and desperate for love, so he enrolls in a weird DNA-based dating service called 100% Match. He is then set up with his "perfect match" and that's when things get even more surreally gross and gruesome than they already were.
2. Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match
Answer: Sally Thorne
Also published in 2002, Sally Thorne's "Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match" manages to dip its toes into a wide variety of genres including historical romance, comedy, and sci-fi, with a lightly gothic mysterious vibe. It's a reimagining of the Victorian England Frankenstein story with Angelika as Victor Von Frankenstein's younger sister, seeking to create her own manufactured man of spare parts, but not just any man - she wants one who will be her beau.
3. Death Match
Answer: Lincoln Child
"Death Match" is a stand-alone novel by the techno-thriller and horror novelist Lincoln Child, who usually collaborates with Douglas Preston on sci-fi thrillers, but this one is a solo effort. In this techno-thriller the unseemly side of forcing "ideal" relationships is explored when the AI-powered matchmaking company Eden, Inc. puts Lewis and Lindsay Thorpe together, only to end in what appears to be a double suicide.
The company hires a forensic psychologist named Christopher Lash to figure out what happened, and then another perfect match ends in another double suicide.
4. Doomsday Match
Answer: Jeff Wheeler
"Doomsday Match", by Jeff Wheeler, is the first book of his "The Dresden Codex" book series, in which he mixes ancient Mayan prophecies, archeological adventure, survivalist high-stakes games, and techno-conspiracy into his near-future dystopian setting.
A family on vacation at a luxury resort in Cozumel become embroiled in an ancient ritual that aims to bring about a Mayan apocalypse that has waited five centuries to be fulfilled: a prophecy to destroy Western civilization.
5. The Little Match Girl
Answer: Hans Christian Andersen
First published in 1845, "The Little Match Girl", by Scandinavian author Hans Christian Andersen, is a heart-wrenching fairy tale about a poor, barefoot little girl out in the cold on New Year's Eve, trying to sell matches to avoid her father's anger if she were to return home empty-handed.
She lights the matches one by one in an alley to warm herself. The ending is haunting and sad, and in fact, was initially rejected for being "too depressing". But it is now considered a masterpiece of short fiction, exposing societal cruelty and neglect.
6. The Marriage Match
Answer: Tracy March
"The Marriage Match" is the third book in Tracy March's "Suddenly Smitten" series of romance novels. Published in 2015, the story revolves around a resort tycoon named Trent Hawthorne and his assistant Cynthia Sawyer, who is secretly smitten with him. Trent's formidable grandmother, the family matriarch of their small town Maple Creek, insists he find a wife and picks out three bachelorettes for him to choose from. Cynthia is tasked with arranging the reality TV spectacle of this courtship.
7. The Match
Answer: Harlan Coben
A man named Wilde (as a feral child, he was found living in the Ramapo mountains of New Jersey) has grown up and still knows nothing about any family he had. That is, until his entry on a DNA website has revealed a hit. Thus begins Harland Coben's thriller "The Match" (2022). That 100% match is his father who is just as surprised as Wilde is that he even had a son. Wilde continues his DNA search and as a result encounters a group of doxxers committed to exposing online trolls who submit their posts anonymously. And then, these doxxers start getting picked off one by one by a serial killer.
8. Matchstick Men
Answer: Eric Garcia
Eric Garcia's 2002 novel "Matchstick Men", a novel about a con artist and his partner whose lives are turned upside down when a long-lost daughter reappears, was the basis of the 2003 Ridley Scott film adaptation starring Nicolas Cage and Sam Rockwell.
While Roy Waller did have OCD in the novel, Cage's Roy Waller had much more pronounced tics and phobias. The novel's central scam $150K "water-filtration" scam was also inflated in the movie to an $840K "Nigerian investor" swindle.
9. Paris Match
Answer: Stuart Woods
"Paris Match" is the 31st book in the Stone Barrington series of Stuart Woods' crime thrillers. And there are 64 of them in total. He must have really liked writing about Stone Barrington a retired detective turned lawyer/private investigator. In "Paris Match" Stone Barrington is in Paris, facing off against a Russian mobster after all of Stone's holdings.
He is Yevgeny Majorov, who believes Stone had a hand in his brother Yuri's death and is connected to the French police. On the other side of things, Stone has a crew of friends, including CIA operatives (one of whom he happens to be sleeping with), who will do anything to keep him alive and well.
After all, he is a well known and "connected" attorney, a CIA operative and a former New York City cop.
10. Perfect Match
Answer: Jodi Picoult
Jodi Picoult's novel "Perfect Match" delves into the traumas and questions raised about morality and justice when an assistant district attorney named Nina Frost and her stone mason husband Caleb learn that their 5-year-old son was sexually abused. How far will she go in the name of love and vengeance and how will that sit with her role as a guardian of justice in society? And what if one's sense of the ideals behind a justice system are soured by that system's failure to instill a sense of justice in society?
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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