Entire The Pending World collection

Every place has a past.

In the Pending World, the past does not always understand that it is over.

A disconnected fax machine at an abandoned Texas collider begins transmitting results from experiments that were never completed.

A Pennsylvania house coughs when the demolition crew breaks through its porch.

A dead man’s unserved sentence reactivates more than a century after his burial.

The dead in Lily Dale begin borrowing the living to finish what they left undone.

Over San Francisco, an enormous metal disc arrives during an hour nobody remembers, and half the city falls beneath its shadow.

These are not interchangeable haunted places. Every disturbance grows
from the history, geography and private arrangements of the place
where it occurs.

The London Bridge in Arizona brings something else from London with
it: the Great Stink of 1858.

A condemned St. Louis tower falls twice.

The vanished towns beneath the Quabbin Reservoir begin requiring residents again.

In Monowi, Nebraska, a town with one remaining citizen recalls everyone who ever left.

And in Tennessee, a television station begins showing each viewer what that person truly worships.

Across seven regional collections, The Pending World travels through New England, the East Coast and Mid-Atlantic, Appalachia, the Midwest, the South, Texas and the West.

Each story begins with an impossible event. What follows is an investigation, not only into what is happening, but into what the town buried, abandoned, renamed or agreed not to discuss.

Sometimes an hour is missing.

Sometimes a second crime scene appears.

Sometimes the Office of Consequence arrives.

Its presence does not mean the situation is under control.

The people at the center of these stories are demolition engineers, county clerks, archivists, ferry operators, tour guides, divers, broadcasters and other local experts who understand one small part of the world extremely well.

Then that part stops obeying.

They still have to determine what happened.

They still have to decide what happens next.

And the world usually collects something for the answer.

Each book stands alone and may be read in any order.

See all seven The Pending World books