**Number One Sunday Times Bestseller**

**Number One Sunday Times Bestseller**

** In a world not quite like this one, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power and Alan Turing has achieved an astonishing breakthrough in artificial intelligence.**

In an alternative 1980s London, Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda’s assistance, he co-designs Adam’s personality.

This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever – and soon a love triangle forms, which leads Charlie, Miranda and Adam to a profound moral dilemma. What makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine truly understand the human heart? Provocative and thrilling, Machines Like Me warns of the power to invent things beyond our control.

** ‘Funny, thought-provoking and politically acute… In this bravura performance, literary flair and cerebral sizzle winningly combine’ Sunday Times**