Oghi wakes in a hospital bed unable to speak or move. The car accident that killed his wife has left him trapped in his own body and under the control of his mother-in-law, as she grieves the loss of her only child.

Isolated from his friends and neglected by his nurse, Oghi’s world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his wife, a sensitive woman who found solace in cultivating her garden.

But as Oghi remains alone and paralysed, his mother-in-law is hard at work in the now-abandoned garden, uprooting what her daughter had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes…

From the Shirley Jackson Award–winning author of The Hole, a slow-burning noir thriller with a touch of horror and the uncanny A disappearance. A missing brother. A lawyer asking questions. And a vast forest in the mountains—the western woods—where the trees huddle close together emanating a crushing darkness and a chill dampness fills the air. The ranger, In-su Park, who lives nearby with his family, is a recovering alcoholic. He claims no knowledge of the man who disappeared, even though the missing man had worked as the ranger just before him. In the little village down the mountain, the shopkeepers will do the same and deny they ever saw or knew the man, though they’re less convincing; and his former supervisor at the Forestry Research Center, Professor Jin, dismisses his importance. But when an accident and a death derail the investigation and someone attempts to break into his office, In-su Park finds himself conducting his own inquiry into the goings-on deep in the heart of the western woods—spurred by the mysterious words he discovers on a piece of paper beneath his desk: “In the forest the owl cries.� The Owl Cries is a treat for fans of Stephen King, David Lynch, and the nightmare dystopias of Franz Kafka.