by Ronald Malfi
First published 2011
Tim Overleigh drags his broken body through the bars of downtown Annapolis, drinking away the memories of a caving accident that nearly killed him six months ago. The sculptor tells no one about the visions of his dead wife Hannah that helped him survive underground, or that she still appears to him. When an old friend offers him a plane ticket to Kathmandu, Tim sees a chance to escape his self-destruction. He joins an expedition to climb the Canyon of Souls, one of the Himalayas' last unexplored regions. The mountain throws icy winds and mysterious forces at the climbers, but Tim faces a more dangerous enemy. Each member of the team carries ghosts from their past, and the higher they climb, the more these buried demons threaten to destroy them all.
Genres: fiction, adventure, suspense, mystery, contemporary, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Annapolis, Canyon of Souls, Himalayas, Kathmandu
Period: 21st-century
320 pages · Audio CD · Dark Realms Audio
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness