Bone Horn

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Autostraddle, Our Culture, Literary Hub, & The Millions

“Imagine the quandary if you were a fledgling private detective and, in the interest of needing quick cash, took a job in which you were tasked with finding proof that Alice B. Toklas, wife of modernist writer Gertrude Stein, actually possessed the forehead horn that had been rumored about for decades by artists like Picasso? That’s the grand premise behind poet and novelist Bussey-Chamberlain’s debut, which she pulls off cleverly and with the kind of literary chops that foretells a great career ahead . . . This eloquently written mystery is both thoughtful and compelling, and a win for a poet seemingly at the height of her artistic powers.” —Jim Piechota, Bay Area Reporter

“Sometimes, you see a book and you just know it’s one for you. For me, it seems the requirements are a thinly-veiled innuendo for a title, an ultra-queer specificity in its themes, and a plot that teeters on the edge of absurd. Enter: Bone Horn, from debut novelist Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain.” —Sally Neate, Autostraddle

“[A] sexy, fun, and exquisitely odd mystery.” —Julie Phillips, 4columns

“A fun and ridiculous takedown.” —Sam Franzini, Our Culture

“This is the kind of mystery novel I want to read, straight up. We need more queer detective stories.” —Oliver Scialdone, Literary Hub

“[C]lever . . . There’s much to admire in this well-paced queer detective novel.” —Publishers Weekly

“I absolutely adored Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain’s Bone Horn . . . [T]he author does a great job mashing up the detective novel with the pursuit of archival research, meditating on the feminine and queer aspects of modernist art, and de-sublimating the forms of desire that often animate the search for knowledge. It also reads as a great satire of the academy.” —Rachel Silveri, Absolument!

“A future classic of outsider literature.” —Isabel Waidner, author of Sterling Karat Gold

“A smart and sexy detective novel that defies genre conventions.” —Elizabeth Lovatt, author of Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line

“Horn-covering hats off to Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain, who has written a tender sendup of modernism, academia, and television police procedurals. She introduces a private investigator who protrudes from the pack, and who I would follow anywhere: across oceans, through archives, and into the bedrooms of the very people she’s meant to be interrogating.” —Amelia Possanza, author of Lesbian Love Story