The day an author can reveal a cover is always one of the most exciting in the long, long road to publication. As I said to my publisher a few weeks ago, seeing the cover is when the book actually feels real to me rather than simply being a file on my hard drive. Other people have read it and come up with an image that represents their idea of what my novel is and how readers will see it on the shelves. And I absolutely adore what HQ has done for What the Bones Know. I might have come very close to bursting into tears when I first saw it, the imagery is so perfect. I mean . . .
It’s a book, my dear friends, an actual real live book! Or at least it will be come March 2026! You can pre-order What the Bones Know in print and digital from HarperCollins or from the usual outlets. There will also be an audiobook coming soon.
A child’s bones, a lost girl, a mind adrift – sometimes what is lost comes back to haunt you … What the Bones Know is a contemporary gothic tale of guilt, grief and redemption.
In the village of Kiln Creek in the Victorian Highlands, a ghost gum falls in a storm. Tangled in its roots are the bones of a small child and the tattered remains of her clothing, including a pair of bright red sneakers.
Single mum Jude Mees is in her early forties and struggling to get her business off the ground while raising her ten-year-old daughter Katie, and managing a fractious relationship with her controlling ex-husband. But when Jude learns that her mother, Nance, who still lives alone on the family property in Kiln Creek, is showing troubling signs of dementia she has no option other than to return and check on her.And indeed, all is not well at the farm. Nance is slowly drifting off into her own world, and there are other disturbing occurrences. Strange smells, inexplicably wet footprints, a voice in the night. As her daughter starts to sleepwalk and Jude’s nightmares begin to take over her days, she begins to wonder whether her imagination is out of control or if something more sinister is happening …
A taut, claustrophobic exploration of what it means to be haunted – by our past, by fractured relationships, by a place we thought we knew and by our own unreliable memories.
Kirstyn McDermott 