Helen Clapp is a physics professor. She doesn't believe in pseudoscience, or time travel, and especially not in ghosts. So when she gets a missed call from Charlie, her closest friend from university with whom she hasn't spoken in over a year, Helen thinks there must be some mistake. Because Charlie died two days ago.

Then when her young son, Jack, claims to have seen Charlie in their house just the other day, Helen begins to have doubts.

Through the grief of the husband and daughter Charlie left behind, Helen is drawn into the orbit of Charlie's world, slotting in the missing pieces of her friend's past. And, as she delves into the web of their shared history, Helen finds herself entangled in the forgotten threads of her own life.

Get an early look from the first pages of Lost and Wanted.

Before we get into everything that makes this book so great, our editorial team wants to be clear on one thing: Lost and Wanted is a very challenging, occasionally slow-going literary work that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s also quite brilliant but, well, you’ve been warned.

The story follows Helen Clapp, a physicist and single mom whose work on astrophysics has garnered her tenure at MIT, a handful of book deals, and … perhaps fewer close relationships than she had anticipated. So she’s surprised when she receives a text from Charlie, her enigmatic best friend from college with whom she’s fallen out of touch. Surprised, also, because Charlie has recently passed away.

Where is this going? Not where you think (hint: there's no time travel). Lost and Wanted is a complex book, and its many storylines function less as plot points than as wormholes to a web of fascinating cerebral digressions. You get the sense that the narrator, Helen, wants to both tell the story and keep the reader at a distance—and all that space (no pun intended) provides ample room for your own imagination to rush in. A great book for an afternoon of mind expansion, this is a read for those reaching for the stars.