Bog Queen: A Novel

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.

“An absolute astonishment.” —Vauhini Vara, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of The Immortal King Rao

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.

The mystery of the Iron Age body draws the attention of numerous groups with competing interests: the archaeologists who want to study the surrounding bog, the peat-cutters who want to profit from the land’s resources, and a group of environmental activists and neo-pagans who demand the body be returned to its resting place and that the moss-layered bog—a marvel of carbon capture on a warming planet—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 is drawn into the controversy stirred by the body and its habitat, she must face not only the deep history of what she has unearthed, but also the relationships she has forsworn in her bid for independence. Flashing between the uncertainty of post-Brexit England and Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, Bog Queen brims with climate 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.

About the Author

Anna North is the author of instant New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Outlawed, America Pacifica, and Lambda Literary Award–winner The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. She is a senior correspondent at Vox. She lives in Brooklyn.