Penny’s novels shine a light on the best and worst of humanity, exploring love and friendship, belonging and loneliness, goodness and evil-the stuff of life that matters deeply not only to the Three Pines residents that populate her stories but to readers everywhere. Her whodunit plotlines serve as a springboard to explore the mystery of human nature, an approach that grants the stories a satisfying depth and psychological astuteness. His job may be to investigate murders, but at their heart, Penny’s books are not primarily focused on crime. The books are, after all, murder mysteries by her own description, they are “proudly and specifically crime novels.” The series follows the investigations of the supremely decent, quietly intelligent, startlingly kind Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec. Why is everyone reading Louise Penny? Three Pines holds a magnetic pull for readers, despite the fact that terrible things happen in and around the village-and happen fairly often, given Penny’s publication rate of a book a year. Penny may have drawn inspiration from real places, but Three Pines is fictional, even a touch magical: In the world of the books, it’s a known curiosity that the village doesn’t appear on any maps, and “is only ever found by people who are lost.” That hasn’t stopped scads of devoted readers from flocking to the Eastern villages of Québec to see and experience a version of village life for themselves. How wrong they were: Readers can’t get enough of Three Pines, finding comfort in returning not only to beloved characters book after book but to the village itself, with its snug boulangerie where Sarah bakes crusty loaves fresh each morning, Myrna’s bookshop that smells of tea and flowers, Olivier’s bistro where endearing eccentrics gather to banter (or argue) over mugs of café au lait or glasses of evening scotch. When Penny was initially shopping her debut novel, Still Life, to publishers before its 2005 publication, she was told readers would never be interested in a crime novel set in Québec. I talked to Penny recently on the What Should I Read Next? podcast about the writing life, the stunning success of her series, and why readers continue to gobble up the Gamache books just as fast as she can write them. For many, it’s a place they can’t get to fast enough. With the 2022 publication of Louise Penny’s 18th Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novel, A World of Curiosities, readers are invited to return once again to the fictional village of Three Pines, the setting of the long-running series, and now a TV show available on Prime Video.

Every day, thousands of readers worldwide embark on a much-anticipated trip: one that requires no plane, train, or automobile (unless they’re traveling to the bookstore) but is instead powered by the magic of fiction.

Three pines still life