Time Out of Joint

What's the line? "It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you?" It's a line that could describe more than one Philip K. Dick novel, but none so directly as in this superb early item in his oeuvre. It's 1959, and unemployed bachelor Ragle Gumm spends his days obsessively solving a daily newspaper puzzle, which he wins with surprising frequency. But his reality soon unravels—not with quite the subtle slipperiness of a Dick masterpiece like Ubik, but with a deliciously unsettling reveal that makes this an excellent starter PKD.