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Penguin Random House
Absence [Hudson, Andrew Dana]
Absence [Hudson, Andrew Dana]
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Author: Andrew Dana Hudson
In this moving, richly detailed speculative crime debut, the world is unraveling from an epidemic of human vanishing. Two novice investigators are dispatched to small-town Kansas to interview a woman who claims to have returned from Absence, offering answers to everything. People are "popping," disappearing one-by-one, into thin air: an ongoing global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish. Harvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalog the crisis. His job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine--until his life is shaken up by an unexpected assignment from the central office. A woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she's been to the other side and back. Is her story true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for answers? Together with his no-BS partner Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out. A sweeping portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson's debut novel is a vividly imagined speculative mystery of cosmic proportions, examining the stories we tell to get by.
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Published: 05/05/2026
Pages: 448
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.08oz
ISBN: 9781641297585
In this moving, richly detailed speculative crime debut, the world is unraveling from an epidemic of human vanishing. Two novice investigators are dispatched to small-town Kansas to interview a woman who claims to have returned from Absence, offering answers to everything. People are "popping," disappearing one-by-one, into thin air: an ongoing global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish. Harvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalog the crisis. His job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine--until his life is shaken up by an unexpected assignment from the central office. A woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she's been to the other side and back. Is her story true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for answers? Together with his no-BS partner Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out. A sweeping portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson's debut novel is a vividly imagined speculative mystery of cosmic proportions, examining the stories we tell to get by.
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Published: 05/05/2026
Pages: 448
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.08oz
ISBN: 9781641297585
About the Author
Andrew Dana Hudson is a speculative fiction writer, sustainability researcher, teacher, and critical futurist. He is the author of Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures and dozens of short stories and essays appearing in venues like Slate, Lightspeed Magazine, Long Now Ideas, and Jacobin--as well as his newsletter, www.solarshades.club. He lives in Arizona, where he teaches writing, futures thinking, and yoga.
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