A bold, big encompassing work of fiction, spanning many years and moving from Japan to America to North Korea. The characters are vivid and original, and the story goes to deep and unpredictable places physically and emotionally. Full of surprises, packed with humanity and history, it's a book you'll think about long after you read the last page.
A terrific slow-burn thriller that is equal parts drama and poetry. It's an exciting, edge-of-seat read but also a wise, beautifully written book. In other words, my favorite kind of book.
The story revolves around Valerie Gillis, a nurse who goes missing in Maine on the last leg of hiking the 14-state beast known as the the Appalachian Trail. The story is told from multiple perspectives inlcuding "verbatim" interviews, Valerie's diary entries and letters to her mother, the game wardens and officials looking for Valerie, and a wonderful, eccentric retired scientist who thinks she may have some light to shed on the missing persons case. It's evocative (you'll feel like you've hiked part of the Appalachian Trail), and it's an absorbing read told in beautiful, varied prose.
“The best thriller of 2025.” —The Boston Globe * “Genius.” —The Washington Post
“A literary thriller of the highest order” (Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Couple), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time after an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to…
A wonderful collection of short shorts (twenty-three stories in one slim, shimmering volume). Wallace packs each story with humor and pathos, love, longing and human yearning. There's a lot of wisdom in these shorts, a cast of memorable characters and loads of beautiful writing. An innovative and memorable collection from a master of the form.
In the dazzling flash fictions of Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars, lives are altered in what appear to be minor moments: an unlatched lock, an old photo, a light left on too long. But in the care of acclaimed novelist Daniel Wallace, those details constellate into something mysterious and magical. The drifter who is mistaken for a movie star, an old woman who sits on the roof of her house to smoke her secret cigarette, a man building a coffin for his wife— the men and women in these stories, hungry for connection, often find that everything hangs…
A riveting literary thriller, spanning past and present, South Africa and New York. The interlocking narratives of Repercussions are a spellbinding portrayal of exile, the meaning of home, and how a young couple’s attempt to liberate their country changes the lives of their family for generations.
