Neuromancer

Neuromancer by William Gibson is an amazing novel, and while it is more of a guy book that doesn't make it any less of a fascinating read. It is full of excitement, violence, sex, drugs, etc. but it is also a book that could be used on the AP Lit test and is thus awesome. Neuromancer follows two main characters: Case and Molly. Case is an ex-super hacker, but because of a job that went bad he can no longer access the cyberworld. He now makes his living illegally smuggling items such as RAM, which is for some reason hard to come by and worth a lot.. He also spends much of his time doing drugs. He is given a once in a lifetime chance to be healed by a revolutionary new process as long as he agrees to reenter cyberspace as a hacker under the service of a man named Armitage. Molly on the other hand is an assassin for hire. She is full of cybernetic grafts, such as retractable razorblades in her fingernails, lenses grafted into her eye sockets that allow her to pull up maps, see infrared, etc. She is a badass. The two meet after Armitage hires Molly to capture Case. Armitage ends up employing both of them and has a fairly interesting back story himself, but that would be a large spoiler. After this Molly and Case end up working together to steal a few things for Armitage. The book is told almost entirely from the point of view of Case, but it does change perspective very cleverly. Case can access special implants in Molly's brain to tap into her five senses, so while it is told almost exclusively by Case, you do get more than one perspective (that might actually make for a good essay on the Lit exam). It isn't until roughly half way through that you really begin to understand what is going on, so in that sense this is sort of like a mystery novel. Once you do understand the plot though it becomes an even better story, not that it was bad to begin with.
As for setting there really isn't a definite one. It takes place sometime far in the future, but it never specifies when. The novel also takes place in several locations ranging from Tokyo, to India, to South America, and even into a space shuttle.

In this novel the original ideas of the internet, virtual reality, cyberspace, cybercrimes, etc. were all first developed. It is often considered to be the father of the cyberpunk genre. The character Case is also now a stereotypical model character for many other cyberpunk protagonists.

All in all, a fantastic novel with interesting characters, settings, and devices. Now one of my favorite books, and good enough to be considered "of literary merit" too!