In World Gone Missing, Laurie Ann Doyle’s powerful debut collection, people have disappeared. In these twelve stories set in and around San Francisco, contemporary issues—divorce, sexual identity, homelessness—thread through a cast of memorable characters struggling to fill the void of a missing loved one. From the newly married couple anxiously searching for a brother who didn’t come home one night, to the successful businesswoman increasingly obsessed with a high school friend she hasn’t seen in decades, to the middle-aged clerk meet her son’s birth-mother for the first time, Doyle’s writing vividly evokes the loss and liberation absence can bring.

Advance reviews for World Gone Missing:

” Laurie Ann Doyle understands how to structure a story so that it sneaks up on you and gives you a thump that leaves you breathless—breathless with wonder.”

– Catherine Brady, author of Best American Short Stories

“In World Gone Missing, Doyle reveals the potent possibilities of missed connections, which can veer from loss and estrangement at one moment to just-close-enough to redemption at another.”

– Catherine Brady, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction

“In World Gone Missing, we are swept along by these beautifully crafted stories, full of surprising truths that carry an exhilarating punch.”

– Nina Schuyler, author of the award-winning novel, The Translator

“Doyle shows real range in this collection, and she doesn’t flinch when rendering emotionally complex trajectories. I read this in a single sitting, which might be the biggest compliment to pay an author.”

– Joshua Mohr