Dead New World: A Cozy Sci-Fi Adventure

Flicker City Phantoms, Book 1

By: Lin Darrow

Narrated by: Moniqua Plante, Michael Gallagher, Nikita Tewani

Technology has raised the dead, but their new lease on life isn't all it's cracked up to be, in the first book of this cozy cyber-noir duology.

Hildy Doval is dead—and still unemployed . . .

Humanity wasn't quite ready for immortality, even in 3025. Ever since the Flicker/Helix company "cured" death with technologically advanced holographic hardware, flicker ghosts have been secondary citizens, lacking purpose and agency.

Spending her afterlife in a boarding house in Faraday City, Hildy is the least-requested flicker-ghost at Carlotta Sun's Purgatory House for Spectral Services. At Carlotta Sun's, Hildy competes daily for ghost gigs against her more marketable housemates: the flighty musician Eyvind, desperate to compose the masterpiece he never got to in life, and Anjali, an imperious silent-film extra whose single surviving motion picture shot her to post-mortem stardom despite it being based on a lie.

Meanwhile, a shadowy, headless ghost called the Graverobber has been spotted emerging from holographic billboards, snatching the resurrected from their so-called lives and sowing chaos throughout the city. When one of their fellow boarders goes missing, Hildy and her friends find themselves at the center of a highly publicized mystery. With only two months to go before a crucial election that'll decide the future of all specters, they must determine who the Graverobber is―and, more importantly, where they belong in this dead new world.

©2026 Lin Darrow (P)2026 Podium Audio

Critic reviews

“I was just obsessed with everyone in Dead New World as soon as they arrived on the page—there’s no other writer whose characters I’ve fallen so instantly in love with. I devoured this book and was delighted by every moment of it.” —Hari Conner, author of I Shall Never Fall in Love

“Darrow’s immersive worldbuilding and her consistently droll narrative convincingly transport readers to the far-flung future with the greatest of ease. . . . The unassuming protagonist . . . grounds the kaleidoscopic wonders flowing out of the author’s impressive imagination. . . . ‘Trippy’ doesn’t begin to describe this wild yarn—it is truly inventive and fun. A triumphant work from a unique visionary.” — Kirkus Reviews