Published May 26, 2026 by Poisoned Pen Press
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 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 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.
In Bone of My Bone, the Thirty Years' War is never merely a vague historical backdrop. From the opening pages, van Veen establishes the destruction, fear, and complete upending of ordinary life, giving the horror real weight. It's the kind of historical detail that sends you looking things up afterward.
When the horror elements are firing, van Veen absolutely delivers on atmosphere. The necromancy feels eerie and grounded, rooted in the superstitions and religious anxieties of the period, and the gilded skull is its unsettling grinning centerpiece. The Bavarian Forest setting drips with menace, and the threats surrounding it feel treacherous and urgent.
My issues were more with the characters and pacing. The opening pulls you in fast, and the premise is strong, but somewhere in the middle, the momentum just stalls out. It picked back up towards the end, but there were definitely points where I found myself reading more out of commitment than interest. I also wanted more from the characters. Ursula and Elsebeth just didn't click for me the way I wanted them to, so I never felt super invested in what happened to them.
Ultimately, this one hit differently than Blood on Her Tongue. The relationship between Lucy and Sarah was so tightly wound and emotionally raw that the horror felt deeply personal. The dread and the emotional stakes were completely inseparable, so even the quieter moments felt tense. Bone of My Bone has all of van Veen's signature atmosphere and remarkable sense of dread, but without that emotional core at its center, it didn't stick with me quite as much.