The Thousandth Floor Books in Order

The Thousandth Floor trilogy takes place in 2118 and 2119, in a version of New York where most of Manhattan has been built into a single thousand story supertower. The higher you live, the wealthier you are, and almost everything a person might need, from schools to parks, exists somewhere inside the building.

Against that backdrop, McGee follows a rotating cast of teens whose lives cross and tangle. Avery Fuller lives in the sleek penthouse on the thousandth floor and was genetically designed to be as close to perfect as science can manage, yet she is quietly in love with someone she can never safely be with. Leda Cole, her longtime friend, has returned from a secret stint in rehab for a designer drug and is clinging to control any way she can. Rylin Myers comes from far lower in the tower, juggling a job and the care of her younger sister. Watt Bakradi is a tech prodigy with an illegal quantum computer in his head, making his skills invaluable and dangerous. Eris Dodd Radson begins the story as another carefree upper floor girl until a shocking family revelation sends her status crashing down.

The opening novel, The Thousandth Floor, starts with a mysterious fall from the roof of the tower, then jumps back in time to show the weeks that lead there. Friendships fracture, romances ignite across class lines and every character tries to protect the one secret they cannot afford to have exposed. The futuristic setting is full of augmented reality lenses, self driving cars and smart walls, but the emotional core is about jealousy, loyalty and the fear of losing your place.

In The Dazzling Heights, the surviving characters are bound together by what happened on that rooftop. Leda uses what she knows to manipulate the others, Watt tries to find a way out from under her control, Rylin wins a scholarship that pulls her into an elite school, and Avery struggles with the reality of a forbidden relationship. A new arrival, Calliope, and her con artist mother drift into the tower aiming to make their own fortune among New York's richest residents.

The final book, The Towering Sky, brings all of those secrets to a breaking point when a fresh investigation threatens to uncover the truth. Old alliances shift, romances are tested and each character has to decide whether they will cling to their carefully built image or finally tell the whole story.

Throughout the trilogy, McGee balances fast paced, soap style twists with a sharp look at inequality and surveillance. Readers who enjoy ensemble casts, shifting perspectives and the sense that anything might happen in the next chapter will find plenty to get lost in inside the tower.