Somewhere out there, in the darkness, a black wolf is feeding. Several weeks ago, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team uncovered and stopped a domestic terrorist attack in Montréal, arresting the person behind it. A man they called the Black Wolf. But their relief is short-lived. In a sickening turn of events, Gamache has realized that plot, as horrific as it was, was just the beginning. Perhaps even a deliberate misdirection. One he fell into. Something deeper and darker, more damaging, is planned. Did he in fact arrest the Black Wolf, or are they still out there? Armand is appalled to think his mistake has allowed their conspiracy to grow, to gather supporters. To spread lies, manufacture enemies, and feed hatred and division. Still recovering from wounds received in stopping the first attack, Armand is confined to the village of Three Pines, leading a covert investigation from there. He must be careful not to let the Black Wolf know he has recognized his mistake. In a quiet church basement, he and his senior agents Beauvoir and Lacoste, pore over what little evidence they have. Two notebooks. A few mysterious numbers on a tattered map of Québec. And a phrase repeated by the person they had called the Grey Wolf.
Louise Penny Book order
Louise Penny is the celebrated author of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, which consistently tops bestseller lists. Her works delve deeply into human psychology and the complexities of relationships, often set against the backdrop of idyllic Quebec villages. Penny masterfully weaves compelling mysteries with profound explorations of guilt, forgiveness, and the essence of community. Her distinctive style and knack for creating memorable characters solidify her place as a preeminent voice in contemporary crime fiction.







- 2025
- 2024
The Grey Wolf
- 432 pages
- 16 hours of reading
'Electrifying drama ... Gamache is a fascinatingly complex protagonist' THE TIMES 'Nobody does evil quite as scarily as Louise Penny' ANN CLEEVES 'This is crime writing of the highest order' DAILY MAIL Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in the small village of Three Pines in Quebec. Someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. When he finally answers the call, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning. That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF. At first they seem small - a missing coat, a note for Gamache reading "this might interest you", a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list - but then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching. A threat unlike anything they've seen before. PRAISE FOR LOUISE PENNY AND THE CHIEF INSPECTOR GAMACHE SERIES: 'Penny delves into the nature of evil, sensitively exploring the impact of the dreadful events she describes while bringing a warmth and humanity to her disparate cast of characters that, unusually for a crime novel, leaves you feeling better about the world once you've finished' BOOK OF THE MONTH, OBSERVER 'Louise Penny is one of the greatest crime writers of our times' DENISE MINA 'No one does atmospheric quite like Louise Penny' ELLY GRIFFITHS
- 2022
"It's spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Surete du Quebec investigators' lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they've arrived in the village of Three Pines. But to what end? Gamache and Beauvoir's memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother's murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt? As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stone mason is discovered. In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village. Every word of the 160-year-old letter is filled with dread. When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up. As the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities. But the head of homicide soon realizes there's more in that room than meets the eye. There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge. In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world. Into their lives. And into the very heart of Armand Gamache's home."-- Front jacket flap
- 2021
The Madness of Crowds
- 448 pages
- 16 hours of reading
When Inspector Gamache is asked to provide crowd control at a statistics lecture given at the Universite de l'Estrie, he is dubious. What lecture might be so contentious that it would require the Surete du Quebec to supervise it? But following the pandemic, dangerous ideas about who deserves to live in order for society to function are rapidly gaining popularity, fuelled by the research of the eminent Professor Abigail Robinson. Yet for every person seduced by her theories is another one who is horrified by them. When a murder is committed days after someone tried to shoot the professor on stage, it's clear that someone in Three Pines is prepared to do anything to stop her. To uncover the truth, Gamache must put his own feelings about the divisive Professor to one side. But with a vision of humanity itself at stake, the line separating good and evil can blur just as quickly as the one between reason and madness - especially when the clues lead unexpectedly close to home.
- 2021
State of Terror
- 400 pages
- 14 hours of reading
State of Terror follows a novice Secretary of State who has joined the administration of her rival, a president inaugurated after four years of American leadership that shrank from the world stage. A series of terrorist attacks throws the global order into disarray, and the secretary is tasked with assembling a team to unravel the deadly conspiracy, a scheme carefully designed to take advantage of an American government dangerously out of touch and out of power in the places where it counts the most.
- 2020
All the Devils Are Here
- 448 pages
- 16 hours of reading
The 16th novel by #1 bestselling author Louise Penny finds Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec investigating a sinister plot in the City of Light On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man’s life. When a strange key is found in Stephen’s possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d’Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art. It sends them deep into the secrets Armand’s godfather has kept for decades. A gruesome discovery in Stephen’s Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized. Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family. For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.
- 2019
A Better Man
- 528 pages
- 19 hours of reading
It's Gamache's first day back as head of the homicide department, a job he temporarily shares with his previous second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Flood waters are rising across the province. In the middle of the turmoil a father approaches Gamache, pleading for help in finding his daughter. As crisis piles upon crisis, Gamache tries to hold off the encroaching chaos, and realizes the search for Vivienne Godin should be abandoned. But with a daughter of his own, he finds himself developing a profound, and perhaps unwise, empathy for her distraught father.
- 2018
The Best American Mystery Stories 2018
- 411 pages
- 15 hours of reading
This essential mystery anthology benefits greatly from an enlightening foreword by Otto Penzler and an elegant introduction by editor Louise Penny...This series continues to belong in most library collections.-- Booklist Crime aficionados will be entertained.-- Publishers Weekly
- 2018
Kingdom of the Blind
- 480 pages
- 17 hours of reading
When Armand Gamache receives a letter inviting him to an abandoned farmhouse outside of Three Pines, the former head of the Surete du Quebec discovers that a complete stranger has named him as executor of her will. Armand never knew the elderly woman, and the bequests are so wildly unlikely that he suspects she must have been delusional -- until a body is found, and the terms of the bizarre document suddenly seem far more menacing. Armand sets about investigating, but meanwhile he is taking increasingly desperate measures to rectify the recent events that led to his suspension. As he does, he begins to see his own blind spots -- and the terrible things hiding there ...
- 2017
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. On the first day of his new job, Armand Gamache is given the gift of an intricate old map that was stuffed in the walls of the bistro of Three Pines.the Qu.bec village he now calls home. The map eventually leads him to shattering secrets, and an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide to places even he is afraid to go. But must. There he finds four young cadets in the police academy, and a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map. Everywhere Gamache turns, he sees one of the cadets.





