When the Bones Sing
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From New York Times bestselling author of Dark and Shallow Lies comes a new southern gothic supernatural thriller about a teen girl in a small Ozark town who can hear the bones of the dead.
For fans of House of Hollow and She Is a Haunting.
The past three years have been tough for Lucifer’s Creek, Arkansas, a small town quietly tucked away in the Ozark mountains. More than two dozen people have disappeared on the local hiking trails; there one moment, gone the next, not a trace left behind, until their buried bodies are discovered.
17-year-old Dovie doesn’t believe in magic even though she comes from a long line of women who can hear the bones of the dead sing, and for the past few years the bones have been crooning nonstop, calling out to Dovie to dig them up.
Some of the old-timers believe that it’s the monstrous Ozarks howler snatching people off the Aux Arc Trail. Well Dovie doesn’t believe in the howler, and she doesn’t believe her best friend Lo when he tells her he is being haunted by dark shadows. All she believes in is her talent that guides the local sheriff to the bones when they begin their song, then reuniting the dead with their families to give them some peace.
Lo doesn’t know peace, though. The shadows follow him everywhere. He soon learns they’re the murdered hikers and they want answers. But the truth of their deaths isn’t buried with their bones; it’s hidden somewhere deep in the hills. And Lo and Dovie must unearth it before anyone else is killed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sain (One Last Breath) combines supernatural terror with sweltering Ozark atmosphere in this hauntingly ambitious paranormal romance. Seventeen-year-old Dovie is part of a long line of women in Lucifer Creek, Ark., who are able to hear the bones of the deceased sing after burial, though she spends most of her time annoyed by the constant demands of the dead. When a staggering number of out-of-towners vanish during a hike on the Aux Arc trail, authorities increasingly rely on Dovie's abilities to help unearth their whereabouts and give closure to the victims' families. Then Dovie's lifelong best friend Lo returns to town. Still plagued by the spirits whose haunting drove him from Lucifer Creek in the first place, Lo, along with Dovie, begins to unravel the mystery behind the disappearances—one that connects not only to Dovie's past but to the labyrinthine history of the town itself. Sain's lyrical prose expertly makes the largely white characters of Lucifer Creek—and their punchy exchanges—jump off the page, while vividly descriptive text evokes an ethereal yet grounded setting. Plot points offer shocking twists that feel appropriately earned in a rural Southern gothic horror novel that will stay with readers well beyond the last page. Ages 14–up.
