Pines grew in clusters along the ledges, and the air was filled with the smell of them and the sweetness of the moving water. Across the river, a cliff swept up for a thousand feet. The water was clear and swift as it flowed between the boulders that jutted out of the channel. The greenest grass he’d ever seen-a forest of long, soft blades-ran down to the bank. His left eye must have been badly swollen, because it seemed like he was staring through a slit. His first deep breath felt like someone driving a steel wedge between the ribs high on his left side, but he groaned through the pain and forced his eyes to open. Sensed the instability of the world long before he opened his eyes, like its axis had been cut loose to teeter. He rolled onto his side and pushed up into a sitting position, tucking his head between his knees. There was a brilliant ache in his optic nerve, and a steady, painless throbbing at the base of his skull-the distant thunder of an approaching migraine.

The nail-bitingly suspenseful opening installment in Blake Crouch's blockbuster Wayward Pines trilogy, Pines is at once a brilliant mystery tale and the first step into a genre-bending saga of suspense, science fiction, and horror.He came to lying on his back with sunlight pouring down into his face and the murmur of running water close by. As the days pass, Ethan's investigation turns up more questions than answers: Why can't he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn't anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out? Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan farther from the world he knew, from the man he was, until he must face a horrifying fact - he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. The first book of the smash-hit Wayward Pines trilogy, from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter, Recursion, and Upgrade Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a mission: locate two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier.

Pines by Blake Crouch