Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Thomas Pierce. His first novel The Afterlives was published in January by Riverhead.

Thomas is also the author of a short story collection Hall of Small Animals and his stories have appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. He has reported for NPR and National Geographic.

The Afterlives is one of many new releases reality with mortality and the afterlife. The concepts fascinates us and this book draws even further into the reasons behind that.

Jim Byrd, a North Carolina loan officer who has suffered a near death experience explores along with his new found love Annie, the realm we all suspect or want to find and does so with compassion, passion and with a realist’s view of what mechanism might lead us to its discovery.

Welcome Tom and thanks so much for joining us today.