Bone of My Bone

“A must-read for people who love stories as moving as they are horrific.” — Booklist, Starred Review

Bram Stoker Award–nominee and USA Today bestseller Johanna van Veen unveils a sapphic folk-horror tour de force—perfect for fans of The VVitch and The Salt Grows Heavy. A skull’s grin is eternal…

The year is 1635.

Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying man: the gilded skull of a saint.

It is said that if you reunite the saint’s skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic’s power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing truth: the magic they seek comes at a cost.

At the journey’s end, they’ll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.

“Decadently atmospheric and deeply unsettling, Bone of My Bone delivers a deliciously disturbing tale about survival and the choices we’re forced to make along the way. Johanna van Veen’s sublime prose and worldbuilding left me completely enthralled.” — Monika Kim, award-winning author of The Eyes are the Best Part