Supernatural mystery, speculative fiction
Mountain and Forest
By Amirhossein Khazaeili
Some mysteries are not meant to be solved. Some are meant to remain sealed.
A supernatural mystery about an unexplained place beside a small town, the seven books of a researcher who lost his memories, and five stones that were meant to keep something sealed.
Meridian Press International PublishingRelease date to be announcedEnglish
The story
Inside Mountain and Forest.
- Supernatural mystery
- Speculative fiction
- Mystery
What if the strangest place in your hometown was hiding something no one was meant to remember? For Arin, Mountain and Forest has always been nothing more than a mysterious place near his town. An enormous tree stands above the forest, a massive square stone rests among the mountains, and perfect circles of grass, flowers and trees appear where they should not exist. No one knows how the place came to be.
Photographs taken there turn completely black. The plants cannot be cut or removed. The rocks cannot be broken. And some people who enter return with no memory of what happened. After a series of unusually vivid dreams, Arin and his friend Sam begin investigating out of simple curiosity, and their search leads them to an old library and to seven books written by a local researcher, Adrian Will.
Adrian's notes describe an older and darker mystery: two strangers who once came to the region, a prisoner brought there in chains, and a great seal made from four smaller stones and one larger stone. Adrian spent weeks studying Mountain and Forest before his own memories began to disappear.
Then people across the town start falling asleep and forgetting their lives. Arin's parents temporarily fail to recognise him, Sam no longer remembers events Arin clearly experienced, and the town falls strangely silent. With Raha and the few others who remain awake, each carrying one of the mysterious stones, Arin returns to Mountain and Forest and finds a structure hidden at the boundary between the giant tree and the square stone, with the place for the fifth stone standing empty.
Mountain and Forest is a supernatural mystery about memory, identity, hidden truths, ancient secrets and the boundary between what we remember and what we were never meant to know. The immediate crisis is brought under control, but one question remains unresolved: where was the fifth stone?
Themes & reading experience
What the book is about, beneath the plot.
Drawn from the book itself, not from marketing copy.
01
Memory and identity
A town that begins forgetting itself, and one young man who still remembers.
02
An unexplained place
Circles of vegetation, unbreakable stone and photographs that return completely black.
03
A researcher's record
Seven books and a notebook left behind by Adrian Will after his memories disappeared.
04
The seal and the stones
Four small stones, one larger stone, and an imprisonment older than the town's stories.
05
Dreams
Arin's dreams are where the mystery first reaches him, long before he understands why.
The reading experience
The investigation is ordinary at first: two friends, an old library and a set of notes, before the phenomenon reaches their own families.
The novel treats memory loss as something happening to a whole community, not only to its protagonist.
Volume One resolves its immediate crisis while leaving the question of the fifth stone deliberately open.
Shelves this title sits on
- Supernatural mystery
- Speculative fiction
- Mystery and suspense
- Stories about memory and identity
- Readers of slow-burn investigative fiction
About the author
Amirhossein Khazaeili
Supernatural mystery and speculative fiction, written alongside university study in Najafabad, Isfahan, Iran.
Amirhossein Khazaeili is a 19-year-old writer and university student from Najafabad, Isfahan, Iran. He is studying Chemical Engineering while independently studying literature and creative writing through books and online resources, and hopes to eventually work in a field related to literature and writing.
He has been creating stories since elementary school, at first mostly through storytelling and sharing ideas with friends. Because of his academic responsibilities and his family's concerns about time spent writing, he began pursuing creative writing seriously only after entering university.
His writing is strongly influenced by dreams, imagination and his own inner world. He often finds himself deeply immersed in thought, an experience that sometimes makes him lose awareness of his surroundings but also gives him ideas and inspiration for his stories.
Mountain and Forest is one of his first completed works and his first serious project aimed at professional publication. He has also begun another long-form project, Forgotten Paths, published in part on Royal Road with fourteen chapters currently prepared, and is developing further story ideas including Colorful Sky, Experience It Yourself, and Two Forms of One World.
Many of his stories are connected to a much larger fictional world he has wanted to create since childhood. His long-term ambition is to write that larger story and build a broader body of interconnected works around it.
Writing interests
- Memory and identity
- Dreams
- Ancient secrets
- Hidden truths
Many of my stories come from dreams and from a world I have been imagining since childhood. I write to find out what is really inside it.
Book details
The publication record.
Only information supplied for this edition is listed. Fields we cannot verify are left out.
- Title
- Mountain and Forest
- Author
- Amirhossein Khazaeili
- Publisher
- Meridian Press International Publishing
- Publication date
- Release date to be announced
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Supernatural mystery, speculative fiction
- Availability
- Pre-order through Meridian Press International Publishing
Formats
- Pre-order editionFormat details to be confirmed
- Additional formatsFurther editions to be confirmed
Continue your reading journey
Read Mountain and Forest.
Pre-order through Meridian Press International Publishing. Further formats and territories are listed here as they are confirmed. For rights, translation, audiobook or distribution enquiries, our team will answer directly.