PINES by Blake Crouch.

This is one you can’t put down (and probably can’t figure out in advance either). Right from the first you feel you’re in an episode of “The Twilight Zone” shoulder to shoulder with the main character FBI agent Ethan Burke. He’s injured, he’s confined to bed in a hospital that’s starting to give him the willies, and he’s got no ID, no phone, no underwear, no shoes, no money, no way out of town, and no one who knows who he is or is willing to believe he is who he says. But he wants to get out of there and he does, spending days wandering around as a wounded fugitive in the very pretty and seemingly very nice town of Wayward Pines trying to figure out what’s going on.

He’s there to find two missing agents. And just about the time he realizes this, PINES veers from “The Twilight Zone” into Shirley Jackson territory and he knows for sure this isn’t a normal reality he’s experiencing. What’s going on?  The town is sheltered between high mountains and all the roads out of it lead right back in. Walking through the woods leads you to an electrified fence with a stark warning “Past this point you will die!”  There are things going on that defy reality.

Keep reading. You’ll be surprised. Thriller, horror novel, mystery, PINES is all of this plus a spoiler genre I won’t identify just to keep you guessing. I was really hooked. 

WHAT I’VE READ THIS WEEK—PINES by Blake Crouch.  Available at  Kindle and other ebook sources, plus as a paperback.