We Who Ache in Winter (Deluxe Edition): A Novel by Johanna van Veen

RELEASE DATE 8/31/27

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From the award-winning, bestselling author of Blood on Her Tongue comes a snowbound horror novel following a group of refugees who take shelter in a burnt-out crypt – but when one of them is brutally killed, it becomes clear something far worse than soldiers stalks the night…

December 1572. The city burns.

When Spanish troops descend, they slaughter men and boys, loot houses, and leave the streets running with blood. A widowed weaver escapes with his young daughter, and by nightfall they find shelter in the burnt crypt of an abandoned church. But they are not alone.

Other refugees hide there: a fanatical Protestant, his burn-scarred wife, a bedraggled traveler and an old woman who lives among the dead. Cold, starving, and hunted by soldiers, the refugees cling to the fragile safety of the crypt as tensions begin to boil over. Then one of them is torn apart. Then another.

As terror spreads through the ruined church, the survivors realize something monstrous stalks them through the frozen dark. And when old stories of werewolves and curses begin to surface, it becomes horrifyingly clear something beastly is hunting them. If they cannot uncover the truth before the cold, the soldiers, or the creature itself claims them all, the crypt will become their grave...