Summary

In the quiet New England village of Bell Harbor, life along the Connecticut River appears tranquil—but beneath its surface, old secrets refuse to stay buried.

Rose McGowan, an elderly painter whose days are marked by fading memory and morning landscapes, stumbles upon a horrifying scene at the riverside: a man dumping what appears to be a body. Terrified and unsure who to trust, she clings to the discovery even as her own recollections begin to slip away.

Months later, Associate Professor Maggie Glass—a former prosecutor who has rebuilt her life after her ex-husband’s crimes nearly destroyed her family—takes her daily run along the river with her loyal Lab, Pumpkin. When Pumpkin unearths a human hand in the thawing mud, Maggie is thrust into a new mystery that shatters Bell Harbor’s small-town calm.

As Maggie navigates her complicated relationships—with her three grown children, her detective boyfriend Finn, and her spirited friend Megan—she is drawn deeper into the investigation. What begins as a tragic discovery soon spirals into a dangerous puzzle involving long-ago disappearances, hidden betrayals, and a community forced to confront truths it has ignored for decades.

Torn between her instincts as a former prosecutor and her role as a teacher of criminology, Maggie straddles two worlds: the intellectual analysis of crime and the visceral, personal reality of confronting it in her own backyard. But as her search for answers converges with Rose’s haunting memories, Maggie realizes that the past and present are dangerously intertwined—and someone in Bell Harbor may stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.

Blending small-town charm with page-turning suspense, By Any Other Name is both a gripping mystery and a story of resilience, asking how well we can ever know the people we love—and what we owe to those who can no longer speak for themselves.