A colony of moss does not express preferences for certain people, living or dead. But if such a colony of moss did decide to reveal its favourites, let us just say this: You might be surprised.

In 2018, a young forensic scientist, homesick and adrift in the North of England, is heading to a coroner's office to identify a body.

In 50 BCE, a female druid is travelling to a city in the South where she will appear before the new king.

And underfoot, all along, a teeming colony of moss is opening its wet mouth, waiting.

In this wonderfully strange, multi-layered story, the unexpected discovery of an ancient bog body becomes a pinprick of light in the depths of humanity's history.

'SPARKLES LIKE UNEARTHED TREASURE' KALIANE BRADLEY
'A MESMERISING NOVEL' OBSERVER
'AN IRIDESCENT CONTEMPORARY FOLKTALE' LUCY ROSE
Rich, wild and shimmering with mystery, Bog Queen is the new novel from Anna North, bestselling author of Reese's Book Club Pick Outlawed
In 2018, a young forensic scientist, homesick and adrift in the North of England, is heading to a coroner's office to identify a body. But this body, found in a moss-layered bog, is not like any Agnes has seen before: its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, yet it is almost perfectly preserved.

Soon Agnes is drawn into a mystery from the distant past: the death of an Iron Age queen more like her than she knows. Along the way, she must contend with numerous groups who want to profit from the bog and activists who demand that the land be left undisturbed. Meanwhile, underfoot, there's the land itself: the wet, teeming colony of moss has its own dark stories to tell.

As Agnes becomes tangled in controversies stirred up by her own discovery, she must face the deep history of what she has unearthed. In Bog Queen, the lives of two young women separated by many centuries become inextricably connected, as each learns to harness their strange strengths in a landscape more mysterious than either can imagine.