by Kim Samek
First published 2026
A woman watches her limbs vanish into digital clouds when wildfire blackouts strike. A food delivery driver finds cameras following her everywhere, producers demanding she reconcile with her immigrant mother for better ratings. A gymnastics coach carries her heart in a Mason jar after surviving a pandemic the world refuses to acknowledge, turning her condition into social media fame. Two sick and single people fall in love, then learn algorithms engineered their meeting to sell them products. Around them, icebergs melt and garbage islands burn. Kim Samek follows twelve women navigating a world where technology warps human connection and reality TV scripts real life. Each woman confronts forces beyond her control while searching for authentic moments amid manufactured experiences. These stories find humor in catastrophe and connection in isolation.
Genres: fiction, dystopia, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
224 pages · Hardcover · The Dial Press
Content warnings: anxiety, depression, mental-illness