Wither: A Midwestern Gothic

By Daniel Warner

No one is invisible.
No more toiling in the dark.
All the world is knowable.

A hypnotic debut novel of meltdown-by-algorithmic-horror.

Mick has been off-grid for more than a year, surviving in the Missouri woods. He's on the wrong side of paranoid, haunted by the catastrophe that sent him running, and he needs antibiotics for a rotting wound. If he can return to civilization, maybe he can reclaim what he's lost: a relationship with an environmental activist named Alison, a dream of escaping his small-time youth for Chicago, and the cutting-edge data-analytics tool that just might be his meal ticket.

But when Mick arrives in Bloom, Missouri, he's confronted by a ghost town: there are cars in the driveways and cans in the cupboards, but the people are gone, and it looks like they left in a hurry. Mick should probably leave, too, but he's looking for Alison, looking for redemption, and he's looking for Regression, the algorithmic black box that promised: No one is invisible . . .

Told in alternating timelines, Wither is an unnerving, thought-provoking horror for our times.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1639736409
• ISBN13: 9781639736409
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"