How to Survive in the Woods

By: Kat Rosenfield

Published by Harper, 2026-03-10

Sleeping With the Enemy meets Wild in this page-turning thriller, set in Maine's Hundred Mile Wilderness--the treacherous final stretch of the storied Appalachian Trail--an addictive and disturbing tale of passion, betrayal, lies, and control that pulsates with erotic and psychological tension. Emma Sharp knows how to stay alive. Raised by a doomsday prepper father and hardened by the startup world, she's learned to survive, adapt, and endure. First as a successful founder, and now as the wife of Logan Grant, a charismatic tyrant who's kept her under his thumb ever since the breakdown that nearly ended her life. To Emma, the marriage is a necessary cage--the kind that keeps you in, but also keeps you safe. But when she forms an unexpected bond with Taylor Cognetti, Logan's former college sweetheart and business partner, a new dream begins to take shape--and with it, a plan to help her escape her controlling husband, once and for all, on the punishing final stretch of the Appalachian Trail known as the Hundred Mile Wilderness. After all, bad things happen in the woods all the time. As Emma, Taylor, and Logan venture deeper into Maine's backcountry, desire and dread curdle into something unpredictable, dark, and deadly. Someone is lying. Someone is watching. And in the remote heart of the forest, someone is about to be lost . . . or found. How to Survive in the Woods is a heart-stopping knockout of a novel, by turns wryly witty, psychologically sophisticated, and deliciously diabolical. In her masterful hands, Kat Rosenfield asks us to consider what it means to be a survivor--and what, or who, you would sacrifice to stay alive.