I didn’t know a book could be both gorgeous and terrifying—but then I devoured this in a day. When two college friends plan a long canoeing trip in northern Canada, they anticipate a peaceful yet memorable summer escape filled with whitewater paddling, fly fishing, and campfire cooking. The first hint of danger is a whiff of smoke, from an encroaching forest fire. The next comes from a man, seemingly in shock, who reports his wife disappeared in the woods. If these boys didn’t feel compelled to do the right thing and go look for her, they’d be fine, but instead they step in to help—and are soon running for their lives, from disasters both natural and man-made. A tightly-written wilderness adventure, a lyrical mystery, and a heartrending story of friendship, rolled into one. For fans of Sebastian Junger’s Fire and Tim Johnston’s The Current.

Hig is the lone survivor of a flu pandemic, save for his dog and a gun-toting loner. Or so he thinks. When he receives a random transmission on the radio, he begins to dream of what might exist beyond life on the hangar. Heller’s post-apocalyptic novel is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD but you don’t have to have read that in order to appreciate the way Heller examines the landscape between hope and despair.

Private investigator Celine is a recovering alcoholic with emphysema who specializes in finding missing persons. When a young woman asks Celine to find her missing photographer father, Celine and her partner head to Yellowstone National Park, where it becomes clear someone wants this man to stay missing. Read this for the way Heller writes about nature and explores the intersection of family, privilege, and the secrets we keep.

From the publisher: "After having shot a man in a Santa Fe bar, the famous artist Jim Stegner served his time and has since struggled to manage the dark impulses that sometimes overtake him.  Now he lives a quiet life. . . until the day that he comes across a hunting guide beating a small horse, and a brutal act of new violence rips his quiet life right open. Pursued by men dead set on retribution, Jim is left with no choice but to return to New Mexico and the high-profile life he left behind, where he’ll reckon with past deeds and the dark shadows in his own heart."

Seasoned wilderness writer Heller tries his hand at the thriller genre in this follow-up to The River. “The virus from three years back that kept mutating, the superbug that finally broke out of India.” Though not a sequel, The Guide picks up Jack’s story several years after The River ends, and spoilers to the previous book’s ending are embedded in the plot. Jack has graduated from Dartmouth and come home to Colorado. Now he’s taken a summer job as a fly-fishing guide at a luxe resort that caters to celebrity clientele. He’s lucky, it seems—it’s rare for a guide to leave mid-season, but his predecessor did. Jack is paired with Allison, a country music star born and raised in East Tennessee who loves to fish for the same reasons Jack does—to enjoy the full absorption the sport requires. Jack’s first clue that something is amiss is the camera. Totally fascinating—the first book I’ve read that incorporates covid into the plot in a necessary and artful manner.

Peter Heller's memoir about learning to surf as a forty-something. After taking a few lessons with a buddy, he realizes the only way to really learn is to dedicate serious time to the sport, so he and his girlfriend buy a VW bus, press pause on their regular lives, and head to Mexico for a few months in their quest to move from kooks ("beginner surfer," with a derisive spin) to accomplished surfer. I have zero intention of ever surfing myself, but that's fine: this book holds appeal for Heller fiction fans, lovers of nature writing, and (I'm being totally serious) those interested in a serious but not humorless exploration of a self-described midlife crisis.