THE NOVELS OF ADAM PLATT

TheSycamore
Hollow Trials

The power is out. The phones are dead.
Millions have vanished without a trace.

It’s just the beginning.

Enter the Hollow
SURVIVAL. FAMILY. THE UNKNOWN.A WORLD CHANGED FOREVER

THE SYCAMORE HOLLOW TRIALS

Every refuge has its limits.

Begin with Dusk & Ashes, collecting Books 1 and 2. Then return to the Hollow in Fires and Floods.

BEGIN HERE Dusk & Ashes by Adam Platt, Books 1 and 2 of The Sycamore Hollow Trials

BOOKS 1 & 2 · COLLECTED IN ONE VOLUME

Dusk & Ashes

At dawn and dusk, the open sky
becomes a killing ground.

Power fails everywhere, and whole cities disappear. At the edges of daylight, strange flying machines burn anyone they find in the open. With the radios silent, the survivors are left to learn the rules by watching people die.

Mike and Amelia are turning their secluded home into a refuge for people with nowhere else to go. Every newcomer brings another pair of hands—and another mouth to feed.

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Mike O’Connell was struggling to hold his family together long before the world fell apart. For Mike, being needed offers a way back from the bottle. For Amelia, it means deciding whose safety she can afford to risk.

Far away, Captain Sheraton leads his stranded soldiers through the ruins, searching for someone still giving orders. Near the Hollow, Duggan has stopped waiting for them. He offers frightened survivors a place in his new world. Obedience is the price.

As his following grows, Mike and Amelia’s refuge becomes something worth taking.

Keeping the children alive may mean teaching them how to kill.

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RETURN TO THE HOLLOW Fires and Floods by Adam Platt, Book 3 of The Sycamore Hollow Trials

BOOK 3 · THE STORY CONTINUES

Fires and Floods

The forest has kept them alive.
Now someone is using it to hunt them.

Winter has reached Sycamore Hollow. The food is running low, and a month after his failed attack, Duggan is still close enough to be a threat.

When two wounded intruders are found with their throats cut, suspicion falls on Elena, the teenager left guarding them. Amelia believes her account. Others aren’t so sure. Whoever killed them is still somewhere in the woods.

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The men were looking for her home.

Mike has found an untouched grocery store that could feed the Hollow through winter. Reaching it means crossing a treacherous river—and taking people out from under the trees that have protected them. He needs the plan to work. Too many people are counting on it, including the children who still believe he can fix anything.

Farther west, Captain Sheraton discovers something in the ruined earth that is growing hotter when it ought to be cooling. The world is changing again, and the routes his people depend on are beginning to disappear.

Amelia has spent months teaching her people how to survive outside. Now she has to find out what followed them home.

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BEHIND THE STORIES

Adam Platt

Writer. Scientist.
A storyteller, again.

A career spent exploring how the world works.
A return to imagining what happens when it doesn’t.

Adam was an avid writer in his youth before pursuing a career in science, designing machines to sequence genomes. He later returned to fiction and is the author of The Sycamore Hollow Trials.

His first published short story, “Ocean Fish,” appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Rock Salt Journal.

When he isn’t writing, his three kids and two dogs take up most of the rest of his time.

Instagram · @ADAM_PLATT (opens a new tab)
BEYOND THE HOLLOWSHORT FICTION / 2025

Ocean Fish

Two brothers. A summer holiday. Something enormous beneath the surface.

In the early 1970s, two boys encounter a monster trapped in the crystalline depths of a man-made lake.

Read free in Rock Salt Journal (opens a new tab)

GET IN TOUCH

A word from you.

Questions about the books, or a thought to share?
Send Adam a message through the contact form.

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