When the Bones Sing

by Ginny Myers Sain Narrated by Amanda Stribling

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

★"Lyrical prose…. 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." —PW (starred review)

"A twisted, gripping mystery." –Booklist

"Like the sulfurous stream that gives Lucifer’s Creek its name, the central mystery twists and turns in unexpected ways, building up to a chilling reveal in the final act that skirts the edge of horror. Gripping and intensely atmospheric." —Kirkus

"This is a remarkable story with a fresh take on supernatural mysteries. The story is brimming with the warm, lazy days of a small town while also managing to be fast-paced and thrilling. It captures the small-town feel—and its scandals." —SLJ

FEBRUARY 2025 - AudioFile

Amanda Stribling's Southern accent evokes the Ozarks background of 17-year-old Dove Warner. Stribling also captures the horror Dove faces when she--like others affected by her family's curse--hears the bones of murdered people calling out for her to discover their burial places. Stribling's tone becomes calmer when Dove spends time with her best friend, Lo, until he expresses his own feelings of being haunted by those who have been killed. Dove manages to disregard the lurid tales of townsfolk until the killing increases. Stribling adds tension as Dove and Lo become more determined to learn who--or what--is responsible. Stribling's narration maximizes the atmospheric setting, lyrical writing, and many twists and turns of this audiobook. S.W. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2024-11-23
As people vanish in the mountains surrounding her remote Arkansas town, a teen with the ability to locate the dead tries to find the killer.

Seventeen-year-old Dove Warner can hear the song of the dead. It resonates through her body, a bone-deep thrum that propels her towards a victim’s burial place. This grim talent is useful in Dove’s hometown, Lucifer’s Creek, where the sheriff has relied on her in recent years to find the remains of people who have died under mysterious circumstances while hiking the Aux-Arc Trail. Oddly enough, the rising body count hardly disturbs the locals—except, that is, for Dove’s best friend, Lowan Wilder, who believes he’s being haunted by the restless spirits of the murdered hikers. Dove is, ironically, very skeptical about the paranormal, but it’s clear to her that Lo’s fear is genuine, as is his insistence that putting an end to the killings will appease the spirits. Folk magic, a family curse, and the specter of an ominous regional cryptid combine with vivid descriptions of the Ozark Mountains setting to give this story a distinct sense of the Southern gothic. Like the sulfurous stream that gives Lucifer’s Creek its name, the central mystery twists and turns in unexpected ways, building up to a chilling reveal in the final act that skirts the edge of horror. Main characters read white.

Gripping and intensely atmospheric.(Paranormal thriller. 14-18)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192113875
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/04/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The first time I pulled a skeleton from the ground, I wasn’t even four years old. I’d wandered away from a church picnic while Daddy sat in the shade turning the crank on our old ice cream maker and mopping sweat from his forehead with a faded red bandana. Nana found me on my hands and knees just inside the tree line, chubby fingers plunged deep into the rich, black dirt. Dovie girl, she had scolded. You can’t be takin’ off like that. It’s ­danger— She froze when she saw me holding a pale finger bone out to her like a prize in an Easter egg hunt. Then her eyes caught fire and she opened up wide enough for me to see clear down her throat when she threw her head back and hollered, “Del! Come look what Dovie’s got! Come see what our girl can do!”
Daddy left the ice cream to melt and scooped me up quick as summer lightning. In one move, his strong hands knocked the bone from my fingers and the damp earth from the front of my dress, and I wailed as he carried me back home.
“Like her mama, God help her,” my Sunday School teacher whispered as we passed. “And her grandmother.” The words wormed their way into my ear, even over the sound of my own shrieking.
“Cryin’ for the dead,” one of the old men added. There were always a handful of them gathered like crows outside the little coffee shop on Mud Street. And the rest agreed like a Greek chorus.
But they were all wrong. I wasn’t worked up over whoever that finger belonged to. I didn’t understand enough back then to weep for someone who was only bones. Somebody I didn’t know, besides.
I was crying because I knew I wasn’t gonna get any of that strawberry ice cream Daddy had been churning. And I’d had my mouth set for it so bad.
I must have been dreaming about that day, because I wake up craving the taste of fresh strawberries cold on my tongue. But as soon as I sit up in bed, I know what it was that pulled me out of my dreams, and it wasn’t the memory of ice cream I didn’t get thirteen years ago.
My teeth are chattering louder than the shuddering air conditioner propped up in the attic window. My whole body is humming. Vibrating at a familiar frequency.
I can feel the dead deep in my bones.

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