The Sentiment Engine

By Khalid Abed

She was only supposed to observe. She ended up pulling the trigger.

In the quiet town of Millbrook, a single algorithmic nudge is all it takes to turn private doubt into public rage. Behavioral data scientist Maya Voss has been sent to run a covert experiment on an unsuspecting town's newsfeed-tracking exactly how much pressure it takes to turn scattered discontent into organized fury. She tells herself she's only watching. She isn't.

When a sincere small-town hardware store owner mistakes engineered anger for his own voice, and a disgraced journalist fighting to reclaim her name starts asking why every rumor seems to arrive one step ahead of schedule, a much larger operation comes into focus: a political consultancy testing exactly how easily a real community can be turned against itself-before trying the same method somewhere the stakes are far higher.

THE SENTIMENT ENGINE is a fast-moving thriller built on real principles of social psychology and platform design: how belief spreads, how outrage compounds, and how easily the questions you never think to ask can be answered for you, by someone you will never meet.
Perfect for readers of social-thriller and tech-conspiracy fiction who want their suspense grounded in something uncomfortably plausible.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H9DH6T6V
• ISBN13: 9798187536450
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 40 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"