Vanishing Daughters

Cynthia Pelayo is the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Forgotten Sisters, Children of Chicago, and The Shoemaker’s Magician. In addition to writing genre-blending novels that incorporate fairy-tale, mystery, detective, crime, and horror elements, Pelayo has written numerous short stories, including the collection Lotería, and the poetry collection Crime Scene. The recipient of the 2021 International Latino Book Award, she holds a master of fine arts in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Chicago with her family. For more information, visit www.cinapelayo.com.

“Pelayo transports readers, blending fairy tales, history, and urban legends with a true sense of fear…” —Library Journal“An elegiac, profound, and lyrical study in grief, this novel is an atmospheric and original ghost story that hooks readers with its compelling mystery but reels them in with Bri’s voice.” —Booklist“A riveting read with the lights full on…Deftly crafted suspense thriller that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the novel is finished and set back upon the shelf, Vanishing Daughters is especially and unreservedly recommended…” —Midwest Book Review“Vanishing Daughters is a thrilling modern fairytale in which a woman contends with grief and love in her bid to save herself.” —Foreword Reviews“Vanishing Daughters is a creepy, moody, devious heartbreaker of a novel! Great characters and a compelling plot filled with twists you won’t see coming. Darkly elegant!” —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of NecroTek and editor of Weird Tales Magazine“Vanishing Daughters plunges us into the nightmare that is grief, from which it feels impossible to wake. Pelayo constructs an elegant yet haunting house of memories, dreamlike vignettes quilted, and interweaves violence, true crime, injustice with dark fairy tales through part poetry, part prose. In this multilayered exploration of sleeping women awakened, Vanishing Daughters illuminates how our lives are inseparable from folklore, from our ancestors, even if unfair.” —Ai Jiang, Bram Stoker and Nebula Award–winning author of Linghun“A marvelous fusion of fairy tale and haunted Chicago history, loss and the will to live on, age-old injustices and a drive to give peace to the past. Mysterious and spooky, Vanishing Daughters is as heartrending as it is spine tingling, a girls-gone-missing tale in which Cynthia Pelayo navigates grief to find purpose in our many deaths, one for every soul we’ve ever loved and lost.” —Nick Medina, author of Indian Burial Ground“A lyrical, ghostly homage to the city of Chicago. One of Pelayo’s finest.” —Erika T. Wurth, author of White Horse“A cerebral thicket, growing tight around and keeping you. No matter how much we think we know, Pelayo shows there’s always another stone to overturn in her Chicago tales. Vanishing Daughters bares the heart in its rawest condition, revealing how our human nature can erode the lines between past and present, between grief and obsession, and between dark fairy tale and ghost story.” —Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Queen of Teeth and All the Hearts You Eat“Part fever dream, part fairy tale, Vanishing Daughters is a haunting and unflinching exploration of loss, grief, and life after death. With sublime prose, Pelayo expertly crafts an emotionally powerful story, where each page drips with beauty, dread, and an undercurrent of suspense that took me on a pulse pounding, relentless ride that kept me up all night. Enchanting as it is heartbreaking, eerie and atmospheric, Vanishing Daughters is a chilling tapestry of true crime and folklore with a dash of supernatural horror. Pelayo’s latest masterpiece lingers way past its final pages. I was enthralled from the first lines.” —Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, author of Bochica“A pitch-perfect depiction of the never-ending twilight of disorienting grief, hand in hand with a thrilling, eerie fairy tale. With Vanishing Daughters, Cynthia Pelayo brings her considerable talents as a poet and her whole heart to this newest chapter of her exhumation of Chicago’s secrets.” —Nat Cassidy, author of When the Wolf Comes Home and Nestlings“Weaving lamentations of grief with Chicago’s deep lore, Pelayo has crafted a stunning modern-day fairy tale that both haunts and mesmerizes.” —Kelly J. Ford, Anthony-nominated author of Real Bad Things“Memorable as a fairy tale and lyrical as a song, Cynthia Pelayo’s Vanishing Daughters will instantly transport readers to Rose House, a rambling old mansion on Chicago’s South Side, and from there, there’s no turning back. This is a captivatingly told novel, threaded with exquisite prose and the darkest of buried secrets. Pelayo’s latest will stay with me for a long, long time.” —Christa Carmen, Bram Stoker Award–winning and Shirley Jackson Award–nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island“With her latest novel, Vanishing Daughters, Cynthia Pelayo has knocked it out of the park once again. A beautiful, devastating achievement that blends the elements of fairy tale with a pulse-pounding serial killer mystery. Don’t miss out on this book.” —Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Rust Maidens and The Haunting of Velkwood