"Peter Heller, the celebrated author of the breakout best-seller The Dog Stars, returns with an achingly beautiful, wildly suspenseful second novel about an artist trying to outrun his past. Years ago, a well-known expressionist painter named Jim Stegner shot a man in a bar. The man lived, Jim served his time, and he has learned to live with the dark impulses that sometimes overtake him. Jim enjoys a quiet life in the valleys of Colorado. He works...

After moving from the city out to the horse ranch with her family, Kirstie Scott leads a pony trek through Miner's Ridge when a sudden storm causes a landslide. Trapped alone in Dead Man's Canyon with a herd of wild horses whose leader--a proud, black stallion--has been hurt by falling rocks, she must find a way out and help the injured stallion.

When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier is happy to take in her sixteen-year-old niece Tally. Practically an orphan, Tally is motherless and her father raises Tally in a haphazard manner--often taking off on wild schemes. Amanda envisions that she, her husband Neil, and their two teenagers can offer the girl stability and a shot at a "normal" life. What she doesn't know is that their own storybook lives are about to fall apart. Seventeen-year-old...