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Bone of My Bone
  • Published: 9 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781464299476
  • Imprint: Poisoned Pen Press
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • RRP: $34.99

Bone of My Bone

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What would you sacrifice for a wish?

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.
  • Published: 9 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781464299476
  • Imprint: Poisoned Pen Press
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • RRP: $34.99

About the author

Johanna van Veen

JOHANNA VAN VEEN grew up in the Netherlands with her two sisters. She received an MA in English Literature with a specialization in early modern literature, as well as an MA Book and Digital Media with a specialization in early modern book history. She enjoys spending time with her girlfriend, her sisters, and her dog, though not necessarily all at the same time.
JvV

Also by Johanna van Veen

Blood on Her Tongue
My Darling Dreadful Thing
See all

Praise for Bone of My Bone

Bone Of My Bone is a holy sojourn of a novel. Fans of Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires will surely worship this blasphemous masterclass of sapphic historical horror. I, for one, am bowing down before Johanna van Veen.

Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

Johanna van Veen writes beautifully rich and daring horror, and Bone of My Bone is her finest novel yet. Every page thrums with desperation, hunger, and dread – this is a breathlessly twisted and ghoulish tale that boasts a fierce, gleaming flame of hope at its heart. Never shrinking from the bitter reality of life in the 1600s, van Veen keeps you happily wriggling on the end of a very sharp hook as she explores the kind of delicate, hard-earned courage that can conquer unspeakable evil.

Josh Winning, author of Heads Will Roll

Exquisite and sumptuous like the most ornate bone-and-ivory casket, Johanna Van Veen's new novel—perhaps her most compelling yet, fast-paced and surprising, and not without some mischievously funny moments—moves with cinematic assuredness through a war-ravaged hellscape and tackles big themes, faith and love and desire, with consummate deftness.

Andrea Morstabilini, author of A Blood as Bright as the Moon

A sapphic romance buried amid the gore of war, necromancy, and getting a little too familiar with the skull of a saint, Bone of My Bone is captivating historical horror at its best.

Chelsea Conradt, USA Today bestselling author of The Farmhouse

Bone of My Bone is a gripping folk-horror fable about love, loss and loyalty that kept me up reading late into the night. Johanna van Veen vividly conjures a Bavaria blighted by death and dark magic in a tale that is sure to hold you in its spell.

Carmella Lowkis, author of Spitting Gold

Bone of My Bone is a gruesome, beautiful, and utterly unputdownable read. Johanna van Veen writes lovable characters and historical horror masterfully—I couldn't put it down.

Tatiana Schlote-Bonne, author of The Mean Ones

Captivating and unsettling from the very first page, this lyrical Gothic tale will rip your heart out. A dark vision of a dark time in history, Bone of my Bone braids together love and death, hope and fear, suffering and delight as only Johanna Van Veen can. Exquisite.

Charlotte Cross, author of The Brides

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