Bone Horn
A Novel
-
- Pre-Order
-
- Expected Jun 30, 2026
-
- $12.99
-
- Pre-Order
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
A newly registered private investigator attempts to track down Alice B. Toklas’s reputed horn in this smart, hilarious, sexy, and unexpectedly poignant detective novel
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are the most famous married couple of Modernism, icons of literary queer history. But what if Alice had a secret? What if, underneath her thickly cultivated hair and low-brimmed hats, there was something sinister growing? What if, as Picasso claimed, Alice B. Toklas really did have a horn?
This is what the mysterious voice on the phone is asking. And our narrator, a newly registered private investigator, is in no position to hang up—she recently walked away from an exploitative job in academia, is bereaved following the sudden death of her partner, and has a kid to support. The case sounds ridiculous, but she needs the money. Okay, she tells the voice. I’ll find the horn. The job takes her from London to Paris to San Francisco, from a Hemingway’s kitchen table to a Beat-inspired hotel run by an investment bank. Just when she thinks the case is dead, that no horn exists, she finds herself knee-deep in trouble with someone hot on her heels . . .
At once a reimagining of the lone-wolf detective and a hilarious takedown of self-important scholarship, Bone Horn is a dexterous investigation of queerness, unbearable grief, and who has the right—and means—to rewrite history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A literature scholar turned private investigator takes on a strange case related to the late Alice B. Toklas in this clever debut novel from poet Bussey-Chamberlain (Grief Is the Thing in Pleather). The unnamed narrator has recently left academia and London behind and set up shop in present-day Brighton. She receives a call from a mysterious man who claims that Toklas, partner of modernist writer Gertrude Stein, had a horn growing from her forehead, which she hid behind hats. For reasons that come out later, he desperately wants the narrator to track down the horn. She agrees because she needs the money, but she's not convinced by the rumor, which she takes for "cruel lesbian gossip." She also feels some kinship with Toklas, who survived Stein by 21 years, given that her partner, May, has recently died. Still, she investigates in earnest, traveling to the British Library to view Toklas's archives and stopping into Shakespeare and Company in Paris, where a bookseller insists Toklas was merely hiding a cyst. Throughout, the narrator offers thoughtful meditations on grief ("No one will ask me if my grief can be contained to paid leave"), which are leavened with droll humor about the futile and misguided work of academia. There's much to admire in this well-paced queer detective novel.
