Miss Wolcott's Ghost

The stunning new thriller from the number one New York Times-bestselling author of The Grey Wolf, selected for the Queen's Reading Room 2026.

'There's a body in Lost Nation.' But the line goes dead before Chief Inspector Armand Gamache can question the caller.

The head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec has no idea where Lost Nation is, or who woke him in the small hours of the morning at his home in Three Pines. What he does know is that the man was terrified.

When he and his team of Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste find both place and body, the situation only grows more bizarre. The unidentified dead man appears to be from an era more than a century old. He's lying in a long-abandoned cemetery, on top of a grave with a date, but no name.

Adding to the mystery, the early morning call appears to have come from Gamache's friend and neighbour, Clara Morrow. While she denies any knowledge of it, it becomes clear there is some connection between her, the Morrow family, and Lost Nation.

Soon, Gamache and his team are faced with tracking down not just the legend of Lost Nation, but a lost ship, lost documents belong to an eccentric Victorian botanist, and a mysterious plant not seen in a century, that might save, or take, countless lives.

As the ghosts begin to gather, Gamache realises that the body on the grave is far from the only death. To solve the crime and avert catastrophe he must look to rancid secrets and old lies no longer dead and buried.

Review

Penny has no peer in her ability to situate the lives of sympathetic characters within such elaborate and thrilling storylines ― Wall Street Journal

It's not difficult to see why Penny and her fans have come to regard Three Pines as a refuge in a chaotic and alarming world ― Sunday Times

Nobody does evil quite as scarily as Louise Penny -- Ann Cleeves

About the Author

Louise Penny is an international award-winning and bestselling author whose books have hit number one on the New York Times, USA Today and Globe and Mail lists. Her Chief Inspector Gamache novels have been translated into thirty-one languages and have sold over 18 million copies worldwide. She has received the Ordre National du Quebec and the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. In 2021, she co-authored the standalone thriller State of Terror with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Louise Penny lives in a village south of Montreal.