Please state the nature of your absence.
A funny, heartfelt YA fantasy for fans of Nevermoor and The House in the Cerulean Sea: magical bureaucracy, found family, and a Brisbane you almost recognise.
Every lost thing ends up somewhere. Charlie wasn’t expecting to be one of them.
Fifteen-year-old Charlie Bones has two good mates, a little sister who steals his socks, and a perfectly ordinary life in Brisbane. School. Sweaty bus rides. A ceiling fan doing absolutely bugger-all.
So why does he keep feeling like the spare chair at his own kitchen table?
Then a Saturday-night bus ride with Rosie and Sam takes them somewhere that definitely isn’t Chapel Hill. The river bends the wrong way. The jacarandas are flowering out of season. And the Department of Lost Things has been expecting them.
Inside, missing keys are filed beside lost afternoons. Patience can be recovered at Window 4. The ibis have opinions about working conditions.
Charlie’s file has been open since birth.
To get home, the three mates must face the Almosts: rooms built from everything they’re losing—and lives tempting enough to make them stay.
The Department reckons it’s all standard procedure.
But the drawers go back forever, and getting filed isn’t the same as getting found.
The first book in a YA fantasy series set in a Brisbane you almost recognise.
