A woman flees with her children to the safety of her childhood farm, only to find danger has followed her across the country. An old man bleeds out in the woods, trying to survive long enough to deliver a final message. A quiet office worker hides beneath his desk as gunshots ring out in the building. Across three seemingly unconnected crises, ordinary lives are thrown into extraordinary peril.

In Animals, Jerrod Edson weaves a taut, startling novella that begins in realism and gradually tips into something far stranger. Told with urgency, dark humour, and a deep empathy for the broken and the overlooked, this is a story about what it means to be hunted-and what it might mean to fight back.

Nothing is quite what it seems. And by the time the forest closes in, you'll understand why.