Bog Queen - by Anna North (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

"An absolute astonishment." -Vauhini Vara, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of The Immortal King Rao

The latest from New York Times bestselling novelist Anna North-a monumental discovery sets off a clash of worlds, past and present, over the fate of the land that holds us.

When a body is found in a bog in northwest England, Agnes, an American forensic anthropologist, is called to investigate. But this body is not like any she's ever seen. Though its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, it is almost completely preserved.

Soon Agnes is drawn into a mystery from the distant past, called to understand and avenge the death of an Iron Age woman more like her than she knows. Along the way, she must contend with peat-cutters who want to profit from the bog and activists who demand that the land be left undisturbed. Then there's the moss itself: a complex repository of artifacts and remains, with its own dark stories to tell.

As Agnes faces the deep history of what she has unearthed, she's also forced to question what she thought she knew about her talent, her self-reliance, and her place in the world. Flashing between the uncertainty of post-Brexit England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, Bog Queen brims with contemporary urgency and ancient wisdom as it connects across time two gifted, farsighted young women learning to harness their strange strengths in a landscape more mysterious and complex than either can imagine.

Review Quotes

"I can't remember the last time a novel so moved and transfixed me. Bog Queen is infused with a profound wisdom about human ambition across the millennia-how enormous it has been, and also how insignificant-that seems to transcend human understanding, as if delivered by the old gods themselves. An absolute astonishment." --Vauhini Vara, author of Pulitzer Prize Finalist THE IMMORTAL KING RAO

"A page-turning mystery and a graceful, sincere evocation of internal and external power struggles in changing worlds, from Roman Britain to a climate-broken UK. Bog Queen sparkles like unearthed treasure." --Kaliane Bradley, author of New York Times bestseller THE MINISTRY OF TIME

"With rich, elegiac prose, Anna North's Bog Queen travels between modern day England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe to ask what we owe the past, the earth, and ultimately, each other. A book of magic and healing." --Jenny Tinghui Zhang, author of FOUR TREASURES OF THE SKY

"Wise, beautifully written, and transcendent in feeling, Bog Queen is exactly the kind of novel I love. North deftly weaves between the past and present to show us the complicated and far-reaching web that connects us all through time and space.
" --Rita Chang-Eppig, author of DEEP AS THE SKY, RED AS THE SEA

"A lightning strike of a novel by a visionary storyteller. Bog Queen is an earthly meditation; a page-turning mystery; and a tale of power, profit, and dominion as old as time. Anna North is simply brilliant.
" --Jung Yun, author of SHELTER and O BEAUTIFUL

"Bog Queen is an iridescent contemporary folktale, steeped with peat, memory and myth. Its writing shimmers with strange beauty, perfect for those who crave the haunting stories the earth remembers for us." --Lucy Rose, author of THE LAMB

"Outlawed stirs up the western with a provocative blend of alt-history and feminist consciousness . . . In North's galloping prose, it's a fantastically cinematic adventure that turns the sexual politics of the Old West inside out." --Ron Charles, Washington Post, "Best of the Year" on OUTLAWED

"North presents a far different perspective on the [Western] genre, one forged by women, Black and nonbinary people looking for the freedom, space and right to exist in a world that largely doesn't want them . . . Captivating." --USA Today, "Best New Books" on OUTLAWED

"Fans of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale are in for a stellar ride . . . North's story [is] as experimental and novel as it is classic." --Boston Globe on OUTLAWED

About the Author