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Two minutes aboard the USS Black Cat — where the Game begins.
The smartest students at Stanford just found a puzzle that plays back.
🏆 Finalist, 2019 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition
Cassidy Hutchins can do something she’s never been able to explain: reach past conscious thought and pull answers straight from her subconscious — on demand. It makes her brilliant, guarded, and very much alone. So when an anonymous invitation draws her into “the Game,” an underground intellectual scavenger hunt sweeping campus, she finally meets her match: a biohacker who engineers his own dreams, a hacker who can breach anything, and a refugee whose faith hides a wound she can’t remember.
But the Game’s puzzles are bleeding into the real world. A predator is stalking Stanford — his victims left with no memory of the crime — and every clue the team cracks pulls them deeper into an investigation someone powerful wants left alone.
Because the Game was never just a game. It’s an audition. And the people watching — from Langley to capitals overseas — recruit winners.
From Stanford’s dorms to the high-stakes tables of Las Vegas, Junior Recruit is a mind-bending techno-thriller about lucid dreaming, polyphasic sleep, and the price of being extraordinary — written by a Silicon Valley neurotech founder who has spent his career exploring the sleeping brain.
Some games, once started, never end. Let the clandestine games begin.
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Finished the book? Tell me what you thought — jberent@gmail.com. I read every message, and reader letters fuel the sequel: Clandestine Games: White Terror, coming soon.
Frequently asked questions
What is Clandestine Games: Junior Recruit about?
Four brilliant Stanford students compete in “the Game,” an underground intellectual scavenger hunt — not knowing it is a covert audition run by intelligence agencies scouting recruits. The techno-thriller blends lucid dreaming, polyphasic sleep, and nootropics with espionage, moving from Stanford’s campus to the high-stakes poker tables of Las Vegas.
Is “the Game” real?
Yes — the book was inspired by the Game, a legendary real-world puzzle-hunt tradition connected to Stanford and the Bay Area (Joe Belfiore’s Bay Area Race Fantastique and the Game, late 1980s–2000s). The recruiting agencies, we hope, are fiction.
Who is Jonathan Berent?
Jonathan Berent is the founder and CEO of NextSense, a Silicon Valley neurotechnology company that senses the brain from inside the ear, and a former director of stealth projects at X, Google’s moonshot factory. A Stanford graduate, he guest-lectures on lucid dreaming and sleep hacking in Stanford’s Sleep and Dreams course. His research on sleep and EEG has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and the cognitive-enhancement techniques in the novel are drawn from his own years of self-experimentation. Junior Recruit is his debut novel and was a finalist in the 2019 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. More about the author →
Where can I buy the book?
Clandestine Games: Junior Recruit is available now on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.
Is there a sequel?
Yes — Clandestine Games: White Terror is in progress. Subscribe below or write to jberent@gmail.com to be first to hear.
Is Clandestine Games based on a true story?
Partly. The Game — the underground Stanford/Bay Area puzzle hunt — is real, and the science (lucid dreaming, polyphasic sleep, nootropics) is drawn from the author’s own experience as a neurotech founder and sleep researcher. The characters, the crimes, and the intelligence-agency recruiting are fiction.
What order should I read the Clandestine Games books in?
Start with Book 1, Clandestine Games: Junior Recruit (published July 2026). Book 2, Clandestine Games: White Terror, is in progress and will follow it.
Is there an audiobook of Clandestine Games?
Yes. A free serialized audiobook of Junior Recruit — one chapter unlocked each day, narrated with ElevenLabs — is available at clandestinegames.com/listen. An Audible edition is in progress.
What genre is Clandestine Games?
Techno-thriller with espionage and psychological-thriller elements: real neuroscience and sleep science, a campus puzzle hunt, an intelligence-agency audition, and a serial predator stalking Stanford.
Who is Cassidy Hutchins?
Cassidy Hutchins is the heroine of Clandestine Games: Junior Recruit — a Stanford student who can reach past conscious thought and pull answers straight from her subconscious on demand. That gift draws her into the Game and, eventually, into the sights of the agencies watching it.
Did Clandestine Games win any awards?
Clandestine Games: Junior Recruit was a Finalist in the 2019 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition (novel category).
Be first to hear when it drops:
This is a work of fiction. Stanford University’s name and campus appear solely as a fictional setting; this book is an independent work and is not affiliated with, sponsored, endorsed, or approved by Stanford University.