Following Speck Callaway from the quiet rot of coastal Alabama to the fluorescent pressure of New York City, A Baker’s Dozen is a dark, unsettling novel about obsession, control, and the dangerous comfort of believing the world can be solved. As the line between insight and delusion blurs, Speck pushes himself deeper into a machine designed to exploit belief, discovering that seeing the pattern doesn’t mean surviving it. Spare, sharp, and quietly menacing, this is the first book in the Speck Callaway series.