Here’s the thing: I love coming across unusual, unexpected things when hiking in the woods. Abandoned, overgrown family cemeteries, the crumbling foundation of a ruined building being swallowed by the forest, a child’s rusted tricycle miles from civilization. Once, when hiking off trail in the Beartooth Mountains of Wyoming, I found an elk skull with a red lacquered chopstick poking out of one eye socket.

What’s that have to do with Chuck Wendig’s forthcoming new novel, The Staircase In the Woods? Nothing, and everything. A forest is the perfect place to find mysteries if you’re open to the possibilities. Sometimes those mysteries are harmless fun, oddities to ponder. Sometimes they’re decidedly not.

This is a tricky review to write, because one of the many pleasures of reading this immersive, unsettling novel is discovering its secrets for yourself, and I don’t want to give anything away.

I can give you the basics:

Five teenage friends, a close knit group that call themselves the Covenant, venture into the forest on a camping trip, when a mysterious staircase appears among the trees. One of the group dares to climb that staircase. He disappears, along with the staircase, sending his friends into a spiral of loss and confusion.

Twenty years later the staircase reappears, and the remaining members of the Covenant reunite to search for their long-lost friend.

And…that’s all you get. I will tell you that this is a story about friendship, and what that word means when the stakes escalate to unimaginable heights, how far you’re willing to go to have your friend’s back, even when they might be pushing you away.

Because this is Chuck Wendig, I can promise you that the characters are all complex, fully-realized people that you’ll find yourself rooting for. The plot is as tightly wound as a watch spring, ratcheting up tension with each chapter. The horrors, and they are many and varied, are visceral, even gut wrenching. Chuck Wendig does not fuck around.

Wendig has become one of my favorite writers. Wanderers and Wayward were masterpieces of apocalyptic science fiction, and his recent forays into horror—The Book of Accidents and Black River Orchard—are fresh and exciting additions to the genre. The Staircase In the Woods is a more than worthy addition to his impressive collection of work.

The Staircase In the Woods will be released on April 29, 2025, and is available for pre-order now. Don’t miss this one.