A 19th-century minister builds an elaborate motor that will bring about the Second Coming. A man with rough hands locks a boy in a room with an albino ape. An apocalyptic army falls under a veil of forgetfulness. The story of Red Riding Hood is run through a potentially endless series of iterations. A father invents an elaborate, consuming game for his hospitalized son. Indexes, maps, a checkered shirt buried beneath a blanket of snow: they are scattered through these pages as clues to mysteries that may never be solved, lingering evidence of the violence and unknowability of the world.

A TREE OR A PERSON OR A WALL brings together Bell’s previously published shorter fiction --- the story collection HOW THEY WERE FOUND and the acclaimed novella CATACLYSM BABY --- along with seven dark and disturbing new stories, to create a collection of singular power.

Audiobook available; read by Karen Chilton, Andrea Gallo, Andrew Garman and T. Ryder Smith