Order of Peter Heller Books

Peter Heller is an American author and long time contributor to NPR. He is also a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and Men’s Journal. He writes adventure columns which have won him awards in the past and he has written numerous books of literary nonfiction.

Heller was born in New York, but moved to Vermont for high school and later went to New Hampshire to attend Dartmouth College. The latter is where he found his love for the outdoors and became expedition kayaker. At this time, he would write about the challenging descents. Finding a love for writing, he would attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he earned an MFA in fiction and poetry. Heller would win a Michener fellowship for his epic poem “The Psalms of Malvine.” He would go on to take part in one of the most ambitious whitewater expeditions and write about it in his book, Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River.

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

If You Like Peter Heller Books, You’ll Love…

• Emily St. John Mandel
• C.J. Box
• William Kent Krueger

The Dog Stars was Heller’s first novel. The book focuses on a man named Hig who survived a flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. His wife and friends are all gone and he lives in an abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley. He starts to believe there is nothing else out there when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna. The voice on the other end ignites a hope and will cause him to risk everything to go and find it.

Heller’s 2020 Edgar Allan Poe nominee was The River. This book is the story of two college students who are camping in the wilderness on a canoe trip when they see the plume of wildfire. The trip suddenly takes on a new sense of urgency. The two men hear a couple arguing on the riverbank and attempt to warn them, but they are unable to find them. The next day, they see a man but no woman. Is this the man? Where is the woman? These are questions they will ask as they fight for their wilderness survival.