At first enjoying a peaceful retirement, former Quebec homicide detective Armand Gamache reluctantly agrees to help a neighbor search for her missing estranged husband and teams up with two former colleagues on a search that reveals the workings of a psychologically damaged mind.

Christmas is approaching, and in Quebec it's a time of dazzling snowfalls, bright lights, and gatherings with friends in front of blazing hearths. But shadows are falling on the usually festive season for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left the Homicide Department, his old friend and lieutenant Jean-Guy Beauvoir hasn't spoken to him in months, and hostile forces are lining up against him.

On a cold November morning, a jogger runs through the woods in the peaceful Quebec village of Three Pines. On his run, he finds a dead man hanging from a tree. The dead man was a guest at the local Inn and Spa. He might have been looking for peace and quiet, but something else found him. Something horrible. Did the man take his own life? Or was he murdered? Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to the crime scene. As Gamache follows the trail

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UNA NOCHE fria y oscura, dos hombres conversan frente al hogar de una cabana oculta entre la espesura de un bosque de Quebec. Uno de ellos relata una aciaga historia, de dimensiones casi miticas, que culmina en el caos y la violencia. Al dia siguiente, la aparicion del cadaver de uno de los contertulios conmociona a los residentes de la apacible localidad de Three Pines.

When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes. Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Surete du Quebec to places even he is afraid to go. And there...

The 19th mystery in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Armand Gamache series.
Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick

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Despues de un periodo tumultuoso en la politica estadounidense, una nueva administracion acaba de prestar juramento y, para sorpresa de todos, el presidente elige a un enemigo politico para el puesto vital de Secretario de Estado. No hay amor perdido entre el Presidente de los Estados Unidos y Ellen Adams, su nueva Secretaria de Estado. Pero es un movimiento astuto por parte del presidente. Con este nombramiento, silencia a uno de sus mas duros criticos,...