Stonepine: A Cryptid Creature Horror

Seven months ago, Jessica Mitchell's father walked into the Stonepine Wilderness and did not walk out.

They found his camp exactly as he left it. Nothing taken. Nothing disturbed. His rifle lying on the ground, spent casings scattered around it.

No blood. No body.

He was a former paratrooper and a lifelong hunter who knew that Colorado backcountry better than anyone alive. It was not enough.

Now Jessica is going back, alone, with his rifle and his old Polaroid camera, to find whatever the search teams missed.

From her first night in the wilderness, something begins to follow her. Something huge. Something patient. It circles her tent in the dark. It leaves no tracks.

It is not the thing she needs to be afraid of.

Eighty years ago, every bear, wolf and mountain lion abandoned these mountains and never came back. The locals have their own explanation. Every story gives it a different name. Jessica is about to learn which one is true.

And she is not the only one searching. Deep in the backcountry, armed men guard a site that appears on no map. They know more than they say. Everything they tell her is a lie.

Because the answer was never in the woods. It is under them, in the dark below the mountain, behind a stone that is not holding anymore.

Jessica came looking for her father. She is going to find out what happened to him. Getting back out with the answer is the hard part.

Stonepine is a lean, relentless cryptid creature horror with a vein of conspiracy running through it, the kind of book you start after dinner and finish before you sleep.