Our Numbered Bones
Katya Balen
Available as Hardback, eBook
12 February 2026
A profound, fiercely tender debut adult novel about buried loss and renewal from Carnegie Medal winner Katya Balen
‘Heart-wrenching … A book to read in a sitting’ LUCY CALDWELL
‘A gut-punch of a novel’ EMMA DONOGHUE
‘Cathartic, bold and ultimately hopeful’ JESSIE BURTON
‘Masterfully written … Envelopes you’ JODIE MATTHEWS
‘Powerful’ CATHY RENTZENBRINK
When her life is unexpectedly upended, Anna escapes London – and her husband – for a remote cottage in the wetlands of rural England. She hopes the solitude might unblock the novel she can’t bring herself to write.
Out in the marshes, the locals discover something shocking, risen to the surface after many years buried in the silty earth. Anna is drawn to the site, fascinated and shaken by what she finds there. And as researchers descend, her curiosity gives way to obsession …
An unsettling, propulsive and fiercely tender novel about buried loss and renewal, Our Numbered Bones explores how we must unearth the past in order to make peace with what we’ve lost.
“In this visceral, moving and at moments heart-wrenching debut, Katya Balen breathes life into the phenomenon of bog bodies, asking us to confront what our fascination with them might tell us about ourselves. A book to read in a sitting, and one that will stay with you, surfacing at unguarded moments”
Lucy Caldwell
See more reviews
“In this powerful and precise novel, one woman’s attempt to reconcile grief with obligation unfolds into a boundless meditation on the female body through time. Layered and textured, funny and sad, I read it in an afternoon and have been thinking about it ever since”
Cathy Rentzenbrink
“A gut-punch of a novel, as honest as it is eloquent”
Emma Donoghue
“Cathartic, bold and ultimately hopeful. A novel with a powerful emotional charge that stayed with me long after I finished it. Katya Balen understands very well how the strange resides in the everyday, how the dark intermingles with the light - but above all, how accepting the difficult archaeologies of our past can offer restitution, and a hope that will not fade”
Jessie Burton
“This book is fierce, funny, tender and true. I knew it would be brilliant, but I didn’t know much I would love it, and how much I would admire it”
Lucy Mangan
Katya Balen
Katya Balen is the author of several books for children, including the international bestselling October, October, which won the Carnegie Medal and is optioned for film. Our Numbered Bones is her first novel for adults. She lives in London with her partner and their dog.
katyabalen.com