Certainty

By: John Twelve Hawks

Published by Doubleday, 2026-04-28

The intense dystopian world-building of John Twelve Hawks (The Traveler) returns with a masterful journey through the near future of Artificial Intelligence, in which a wise, orphaned ten-year-old girl goes on the run with only her trusty "Interactive Toy" to guide her toward New York City, where a dark landscape, and perhaps a hidden hero, await her. In a post-pandemic future where AI has infiltrated daily life, the line between what is real and what is digital has eroded to nothing. As Manhattan is overrun by wireheads who spend their days literally plugged into virtual reality, algorithms and robots have replaced everything from the criminal justice system to individual loved ones. As long as she can remember, ten-year-old Kate has felt like someone was watching her. She has been orphaned since the pandemic, her foster parents find her eccentric and off-putting, and her legal guardian is nowhere to be seen. Now, an algorithm has predicted the very worst--​within thirty days, Kate will either be killed, or become a killer. When two police officers arrive at her home in Maine intending to implant her with a tracking device, Kate is urged by her trusted AI Interactive Toy (a talking stuffed seal named Zeno) to make an immediate escape. Confused and looking for answers, the girl sets a course for New York City and begins an Orwellian journey into the unknown. Gripping, intricately plotted, and delightfully imaginative, Certainty is a profound and eerily prescient novel about the ever-blurring line between man and machine. Amid the murder investigation of a gifted AI robot-maker, a missing-person being tracked down in the darkest corners of virtual reality, and Kate's harrowing journey to New York, John Twelve Hawks's novel explores the spectacular humanity to be found in a world where humans are themselves endangered.