Benjamin Obler

The Mombaccus Expansion Benjamin Obler

When two best friends leave their professional industries-tech for Wolfgang Lewis, fashion for Damon Townes-to start a publishing company, their fortunes rise to fantastic heights. But this is an age when nothing is kept secret for long, and while ambition and savvy brings them success, their arrogance and questionable morals send them sliding down the precipitous face of Mt. Wrong Side of History. Lewis had a career in IT, but Literature is his one true jam. Seeking greener pastures than NYC's work-till-you-die ethos, he visits the idyllic mountain town of Mombaccus, where he meets the journalist Joyce Murray, holder of a fortuitous extra ticket to a talk by tech mogul Ogawa Jun. Damon Townes' fashion startup Axis Jeans derails when the pockets fail to support an ever-bigger iPhone. Revenge is his, though, in the glamorous book business, until he and Lewis are accused of supporting the very inequality and privilege that their progressive literary startup, Dos Muchachos Press, claims to condemn. Politics are the least of their problems, however, when a strange technology appears, and they are visited by an agent of a clandestine group representing the Literary Powers That Be.