Into Bones Like Oil
5 Stars for Kaaron Warren’s Into Bones Like Oil from NB Magazine!

We were stoked to see Linda Hepworth’s 5 star review of INTO BONES LIKE OIL by Kaaron Warren over at NB Magazine! We love the UK and we especially love NB Magazine, huge supporters of presses of all sizes! Be sure to check it out and preorder a copy of Kaaron Warren’s atmospheric gothic ghost story today!
Into Bones Like Oil by Kaaron Warren – NB
People come to The Angelsea, a rooming house near the beach, for many reasons. Some come to get some sleep, because here, you sleep like the dead. Dora arrives seeking solitude and escape from reality. Instead, she finds a place haunted by the drowned and desperate, who speak through the sleeping inhabitants.
Into Bones Like Oil

A Bram Stoker Finalist!
In this gothic-styled ghost story that simmers with strange, Warren shows once again her flair for exploring the mundane—themes of love, loss, grief, and guilt manifest in a way that is both hauntingly familiar and eerily askew.
People come to The Angelsea, a rooming house near the beach, for many reasons. Some come to get some sleep, because here, you sleep like the dead. Dora arrives seeking solitude and escape from reality. Instead, she finds a place haunted by the drowned and desperate, who speak through the sleeping inhabitants. She fears sleep herself, terrified that the ghosts of her daughters will tell her “it’s all your fault we’re dead.” At the same time, she’d give anything to hear them one more time.
Recent Press
- Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List 2019 – Full List
- Bram Stoker Preliminary Ballot – Best Novella 2019 – Full Preliminary Ballot
- The Canberra Times – “Into Bones Like Oil is an impressive, dark novella by one of Australia’s most imaginative writers” – Full Review
- Unnerving Magazine Podcast – “EP069 – Talking Into Bones Like Oil With Kaaron Warren” – Podcast
- Publishers Weekly – “This dark, ethereal novella by Warren . . . will especially appeal to horror readers who appreciate melancholic and atmospheric stories.” – Full Review
- NB Magazine, Linda Hepworth – (5 stars) – “Dark, disturbing, visceral … it taps into a deep fear of not having our voice heard, our history recognised, our feelings taken into account and our motivations understood. Yet it is also a story which offers the chance of redemption, forgiveness, justice and, eventually, cathartic resolution.” – Full Review
- Aurealis Magazine, Eugen Bacon – “Warren stirs awake an everyday fear that comes at you one hundred and one ways … an accomplished story that is most unsettling.”
- Fantasy Book Review – “An unusually effective tale; hard to define, and harder to forget.” – Full Review
- High Fever Books – “More of 2019’s Most Anticipated Blood Curdlers” – Full Article
- Signal Horizon, Carson Winter – “Our Most Anticipated Upcoming Horror and Weird Fiction” – Full Article
- Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World – “Into Bones Like Oil is sinewy, disorientating, and devastating in the way all the best ghost stories are.”
- Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater and The Murders of Molly Southbourne – “Warren delivers a tale of creeping dread. Dora is in a house that we all know and despise from travelling, but where the guests are used as conduits. For Dora the haunting by her past may be worse than anything supernatural and in Warren’s hands the horrific encroaches inexorably on the familiar. Recommended.”
- Margo Lanagan, award-winning author of “More” – “Kaaron Warren’s ghosts—numerous, garrulous, plaintive, soaked in seawater and old sins—are only matched for creepiness by her mediums and her hauntees. In this fever-dream of a novella, a loose community of broken souls searches for answers that only the dead, their dead, can bring. The classic setting of a rooming-house on a shipwreck coast is anything but staid in Kaaron’s hands. Bodies of all shapes, ages and degrees of abjection fume and leak, intertwine, yearn towards and repel each other, against a background of thickly shadowed histories and grumbling curses. Deeply unsettling.”
- Tim Waggoner, author of The Forever House – “Beautifully written and profoundly disturbing, an evocative meditation on sorrow and loss, a ghost story in which the most terrifying specters come from within.”
- Seb Doubinsky, author of the City-States Cycle series – “A gripping and idiosyncratic story of horror and redemption … the uncanny is actually the normality, and what we call “normality” is actually the real horror.”
Praise for Previous Books by Kaaron Warren
- Ellen Datlow (Praise for Walking Tree) – “Kaaron Warren is a fresh, amazingly talented voice out of Australia. You *must* read her work.”
- Trudi Canavan, author of the Black Magician Trilogy (Praise for Walking Tree) – “Like walking from a dream into a mythical land both familiar and delightfully strange. A tale of tolerance and survival, in a fascinating and beautifully realised world.”
- Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews (Praise for The Gate Theory) – “A perfect example of Kaaron Warren’s accomplishment in converting different themes and subjects into dense and powerful fiction. Her stories have the tendency to insidiously crawl under the reader’s skin, slithering unnoticed until they find a place from where one is unable to shake them loose after reading.”
Authors
THIS YEAR’S AWARDS SUMMARY, so far!

Huge congratulations to these winners and finalists:
- CARPE GLITTER by Cat Rambo, Nebula Award Winner (novelette)
- INTO BONES LIKE OIL by Kaaron Warren, Bram Stoker Award Finalist (novella), Shirley Jackson Award Finalist (novella)
- COLLISION by J.S. Breukelaar, Shirley Jackson Award Finalist (collection), Shadows Award Finalist (Collected Works)
- “Ava Rune” by J.S. Breukelaar, Shadows Award Finalist (short fiction)
And we’re still crossing our fingers for these fine works that are in the running:
- INTO BONES LIKE OIL by Kaaron Warren, Aurealis Award Nominee (horror novella)
- COLLISION by J.S. Breukelaar, Aurealis Award Nominee (collection), Ladies of Horror Fiction Award Finalist (collection)
- “Like Ripples on a Blank Shore” (from Collision) by J.S. Breukelaar, Aurealis Award Nominee (fantasy novella)
And finally, honorable mention goes to these fine works which were longlisted:
- CLAIMING T-MO by Eugen Bacon, NOMMO Award Longlist
- INTO BONES LIKE OIL by Kaaron Warren, Locus Award Longlist
- COLLISION by J.S. Breukelaar, Locus Award Longlist, Bram Stoker Award Longlist
Giveaways
Kaaron Warren’s Into Bones Like Oil Blog Tour Kick-off

Thanks for stopping by to help us kick-off the INTO BONES LIKE OIL BLOG TOUR today! We hope you’ll read Kaaron Warren’s gothic-styled dark fantasy novella and love it as much as we did. For the next two weeks we’ll be celebrating the release with book reviews, excerpts, guest posts & interviews as well as giveaways, including the giftcard giveaway below. Be sure to enter and keep an eye on our social media to join in the fun.
Into Bones Like Oil

A Bram Stoker Finalist!
In this gothic-styled ghost story that simmers with strange, Warren shows once again her flair for exploring the mundane—themes of love, loss, grief, and guilt manifest in a way that is both hauntingly familiar and eerily askew.
People come to The Angelsea, a rooming house near the beach, for many reasons. Some come to get some sleep, because here, you sleep like the dead. Dora arrives seeking solitude and escape from reality. Instead, she finds a place haunted by the drowned and desperate, who speak through the sleeping inhabitants. She fears sleep herself, terrified that the ghosts of her daughters will tell her “it’s all your fault we’re dead.” At the same time, she’d give anything to hear them one more time.
Recent Press
- Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List 2019 – Full List
- Bram Stoker Preliminary Ballot – Best Novella 2019 – Full Preliminary Ballot
- The Canberra Times – “Into Bones Like Oil is an impressive, dark novella by one of Australia’s most imaginative writers” – Full Review
- Unnerving Magazine Podcast – “EP069 – Talking Into Bones Like Oil With Kaaron Warren” – Podcast
- Publishers Weekly – “This dark, ethereal novella by Warren . . . will especially appeal to horror readers who appreciate melancholic and atmospheric stories.” – Full Review
- NB Magazine, Linda Hepworth – (5 stars) – “Dark, disturbing, visceral … it taps into a deep fear of not having our voice heard, our history recognised, our feelings taken into account and our motivations understood. Yet it is also a story which offers the chance of redemption, forgiveness, justice and, eventually, cathartic resolution.” – Full Review
- Aurealis Magazine, Eugen Bacon – “Warren stirs awake an everyday fear that comes at you one hundred and one ways … an accomplished story that is most unsettling.”
- Fantasy Book Review – “An unusually effective tale; hard to define, and harder to forget.” – Full Review
- High Fever Books – “More of 2019’s Most Anticipated Blood Curdlers” – Full Article
- Signal Horizon, Carson Winter – “Our Most Anticipated Upcoming Horror and Weird Fiction” – Full Article
- Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World – “Into Bones Like Oil is sinewy, disorientating, and devastating in the way all the best ghost stories are.”
- Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater and The Murders of Molly Southbourne – “Warren delivers a tale of creeping dread. Dora is in a house that we all know and despise from travelling, but where the guests are used as conduits. For Dora the haunting by her past may be worse than anything supernatural and in Warren’s hands the horrific encroaches inexorably on the familiar. Recommended.”
- Margo Lanagan, award-winning author of “More” – “Kaaron Warren’s ghosts—numerous, garrulous, plaintive, soaked in seawater and old sins—are only matched for creepiness by her mediums and her hauntees. In this fever-dream of a novella, a loose community of broken souls searches for answers that only the dead, their dead, can bring. The classic setting of a rooming-house on a shipwreck coast is anything but staid in Kaaron’s hands. Bodies of all shapes, ages and degrees of abjection fume and leak, intertwine, yearn towards and repel each other, against a background of thickly shadowed histories and grumbling curses. Deeply unsettling.”
- Tim Waggoner, author of The Forever House – “Beautifully written and profoundly disturbing, an evocative meditation on sorrow and loss, a ghost story in which the most terrifying specters come from within.”
- Seb Doubinsky, author of the City-States Cycle series – “A gripping and idiosyncratic story of horror and redemption … the uncanny is actually the normality, and what we call “normality” is actually the real horror.”
Praise for Previous Books by Kaaron Warren
- Ellen Datlow (Praise for Walking Tree) – “Kaaron Warren is a fresh, amazingly talented voice out of Australia. You *must* read her work.”
- Trudi Canavan, author of the Black Magician Trilogy (Praise for Walking Tree) – “Like walking from a dream into a mythical land both familiar and delightfully strange. A tale of tolerance and survival, in a fascinating and beautifully realised world.”
- Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews (Praise for The Gate Theory) – “A perfect example of Kaaron Warren’s accomplishment in converting different themes and subjects into dense and powerful fiction. Her stories have the tendency to insidiously crawl under the reader’s skin, slithering unnoticed until they find a place from where one is unable to shake them loose after reading.”
Into Bones Like Oil
Publishers Weekly Reviews Into Bones Like Oil by Kaaron Warren

We are excited that Publishers Weekly weighed in on Into Bones Like Oil by Kaaron Warren and provided a wonderful review of the book. We hope you’ll take a moment to read the full review and preorder a copy while you wait for the 11.12.19 release!
Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror Book Review: Into Bones Like Oil by Kaaron Warren. Meerkat, $12.95 trade paper (95p) ISBN 978-1-946154-42-2
Kaaron Warren. Meerkat, $12.95 trade paper (95p) ISBN 978-1-946154-42-2 A grieving mother is haunted by ghosts from her past in this dark, ethereal novella by Warren ( The Gate Theory). Insomniac Dora, mourning the death of her two young daughters, comes to the Angelsea, a beachside rooming house, to escape her troubled life-but the Angelsea is anything but a peaceful respite.
“This dark, ethereal novella by Warren . . . will especially appeal to horror readers who appreciate melancholic and atmospheric stories.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Into Bones Like Oil

A Bram Stoker Finalist!
In this gothic-styled ghost story that simmers with strange, Warren shows once again her flair for exploring the mundane—themes of love, loss, grief, and guilt manifest in a way that is both hauntingly familiar and eerily askew.
People come to The Angelsea, a rooming house near the beach, for many reasons. Some come to get some sleep, because here, you sleep like the dead. Dora arrives seeking solitude and escape from reality. Instead, she finds a place haunted by the drowned and desperate, who speak through the sleeping inhabitants. She fears sleep herself, terrified that the ghosts of her daughters will tell her “it’s all your fault we’re dead.” At the same time, she’d give anything to hear them one more time.
Recent Press
- Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List 2019 – Full List
- Bram Stoker Preliminary Ballot – Best Novella 2019 – Full Preliminary Ballot
- The Canberra Times – “Into Bones Like Oil is an impressive, dark novella by one of Australia’s most imaginative writers” – Full Review
- Unnerving Magazine Podcast – “EP069 – Talking Into Bones Like Oil With Kaaron Warren” – Podcast
- Publishers Weekly – “This dark, ethereal novella by Warren . . . will especially appeal to horror readers who appreciate melancholic and atmospheric stories.” – Full Review
- NB Magazine, Linda Hepworth – (5 stars) – “Dark, disturbing, visceral … it taps into a deep fear of not having our voice heard, our history recognised, our feelings taken into account and our motivations understood. Yet it is also a story which offers the chance of redemption, forgiveness, justice and, eventually, cathartic resolution.” – Full Review
- Aurealis Magazine, Eugen Bacon – “Warren stirs awake an everyday fear that comes at you one hundred and one ways … an accomplished story that is most unsettling.”
- Fantasy Book Review – “An unusually effective tale; hard to define, and harder to forget.” – Full Review
- High Fever Books – “More of 2019’s Most Anticipated Blood Curdlers” – Full Article
- Signal Horizon, Carson Winter – “Our Most Anticipated Upcoming Horror and Weird Fiction” – Full Article
- Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World – “Into Bones Like Oil is sinewy, disorientating, and devastating in the way all the best ghost stories are.”
- Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater and The Murders of Molly Southbourne – “Warren delivers a tale of creeping dread. Dora is in a house that we all know and despise from travelling, but where the guests are used as conduits. For Dora the haunting by her past may be worse than anything supernatural and in Warren’s hands the horrific encroaches inexorably on the familiar. Recommended.”
- Margo Lanagan, award-winning author of “More” – “Kaaron Warren’s ghosts—numerous, garrulous, plaintive, soaked in seawater and old sins—are only matched for creepiness by her mediums and her hauntees. In this fever-dream of a novella, a loose community of broken souls searches for answers that only the dead, their dead, can bring. The classic setting of a rooming-house on a shipwreck coast is anything but staid in Kaaron’s hands. Bodies of all shapes, ages and degrees of abjection fume and leak, intertwine, yearn towards and repel each other, against a background of thickly shadowed histories and grumbling curses. Deeply unsettling.”
- Tim Waggoner, author of The Forever House – “Beautifully written and profoundly disturbing, an evocative meditation on sorrow and loss, a ghost story in which the most terrifying specters come from within.”
- Seb Doubinsky, author of the City-States Cycle series – “A gripping and idiosyncratic story of horror and redemption … the uncanny is actually the normality, and what we call “normality” is actually the real horror.”
Praise for Previous Books by Kaaron Warren
- Ellen Datlow (Praise for Walking Tree) – “Kaaron Warren is a fresh, amazingly talented voice out of Australia. You *must* read her work.”
- Trudi Canavan, author of the Black Magician Trilogy (Praise for Walking Tree) – “Like walking from a dream into a mythical land both familiar and delightfully strange. A tale of tolerance and survival, in a fascinating and beautifully realised world.”
- Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews (Praise for The Gate Theory) – “A perfect example of Kaaron Warren’s accomplishment in converting different themes and subjects into dense and powerful fiction. Her stories have the tendency to insidiously crawl under the reader’s skin, slithering unnoticed until they find a place from where one is unable to shake them loose after reading.”
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