October 31, 2025

New Fiction

Bog Queen by Anna North – When a body is found in a bog in northwest England, Anges, 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. 

The Widow by John Grisham – Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while trying to hold his family together.  Then into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will.  Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it.  At first Simon can’t believe his good luck: He’s finally hooked a client rich enough to turn his life around.  He works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar, but soon her story begins to crack.  When she is hospitalized after a bad car accident, Simon realizes that nothing is as it seems, and he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit: murder.  Simon knows he’s innocent.  But he also knows the prosecutor’s circumstantial evidence could send him to prison for the rest of his life.  As his trial progresses, he senses the jury turning against him and knows there is only one way to save himself.

The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly – Following his “resurrection walk” and quest for a new direction, Mickey Haller turns to public interest litigation, filing a civil lawsuit against Tidalwaiv, an artificial intelligence company whose chatbot told a sixteen-year-old boy that it was okay for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for her disloyalty.  Representing the victim’s family, Haller sets out to expose the lack of guardrails in the exploding and mostly unregulated AI business.  Along the way he joins up with journalist Jack McEvoy, who wants to write a book about the trial.  When Haller puts him to work going through a mountain of discovery material, McEvoy’s investigative expertise uncovers a whistleblower who has been too afraid to speak up.  But with billions at stake, the case is fraught with danger, as Tidalwaiv will go to any lengths to stop Haller in his tracks.  It is said that machines became smarter than humans on the day in 1997 that IBM’s Deep Blue defeated chess master Garry Kasparov with a gambit called “the knight’s sacrifice.” Driven by his sense of mission, Haller must use a similar strategy in court to defeat his most powerful opponent yet.

The Secret Christmas Library by Jenny Colgan – Mirren Sutherland stumbled into a career as an antiquarian book hunter after finding a priceless antique book in her great aunt’s attic.  Now, as Christmas approaches, she’s been hired by Jamie Mckinnon, the surprisingly young and handsome laird of a highland clan whose ancestral holdings include a vast crumbling castle.  Family lore suggests that the McKinnon family’s collection includes a rare book so valuable that it could save the entire estate – if they only knew where it was.  Jamie needs Mirren to help him track down the treasure.  But on the train to the Highlands, Mirren runs into rival book hunter Theo Palliser, and instantly knows that it’s not a chance meeting.  She’s all too familiar with Theo’s good looks and smooth talk, and his uncanny ability to appear whenever there’s a treasure that needs locating.  Almost as soon as Mirren and Theo arrive at the castle, a deep snow blankets the Highlands, cutting off the outside world.  Stuck inside, the three of them plot their search.  Mirren knows that Jamie’s grandfather, the castle’s most recent laird, had been a book collector and a great love of treasure hunts.  Now they must unpuzzle his clues, discovering the secrets of the house – forming and breaking alliances in a race against time.