A World of Curiosities

A letter, a century and a half old, describes a stone mason bricking up a room in the old Hadley house because of what was inside. When the villagers of Three Pines open it, they find a chamber crowded with oddities — and a painting: a version of the village itself, altered, salted with puzzles and hidden messages, and threaded through with a promise of revenge.

At the same time Fiona and Sam Arsenault come back to Three Pines. They are the children of the murdered woman in the very first case Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir worked together, years before, and their return unsettles both men for reasons they do not entirely agree on.

A World of Curiosities is the eighteenth Chief Inspector Gamache novel. It reaches back to the beginning of the partnership at the heart of the series, and brings an old enemy to the edge of the village.