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Vanishing Daughters

A Thriller

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Vanishing Daughters

By: Cynthia Pelayo
Narrated by: Joe Knezevich, Emily Lawrence
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About this listen

A haunted woman stalked by a serial killer confronts the horrors of fairy tales and the nightmares of real life in a breathtaking novel of psychological suspense by a Bram Stoker Award-winning author.

It started the night journalist Briar Thorne’s mother died in their rambling old mansion on Chicago’s South Side.

The nightmares of a woman in white pleading to come home, music switched on in locked rooms, and the panicked fear of being swallowed by the dark…Bri has almost convinced herself that these stirrings of dread are simply manifestations of grief and not the beyond-world of ghostly impossibilities her mother believed in. And more tangible terrors still lurk outside the decaying Victorian greystone.

A serial killer has claimed the lives of fifty-one women in the Chicago area. When Bri starts researching the murders, she meets a stranger who tells her there’s more to her sleepless nights than bad dreams—they hold the key to putting ghosts to rest and stopping a killer. But the killer has caught on and is closing in, and if Bri doesn’t answer the call of the dead soon, she’ll be walking among them.

©2025 by Cynthia Pelayo. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Crime Gothic Horror Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Haunted Murder Ghost Scary

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Critic reviews

“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
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Imagine if Sleeping Beauty was a victim of a serial killer who is still around collecting his victims. And a ghost of one of those victims is trying to help the main character solve the mystery. And basically that is the premise of this story. It’s very imaginative and I applaud the author for doing that but the story does drag on a bit and gets a bit repetitive.

A Compelling Psychological Thriller That Encroaches On Fairy Tales and the Supernatural World

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I have no idea how she does it, but Cynthia Pelayo has constructed her own category of Historical Self-Help Horror. And it works.

This book was tense and cathartic in equal measures. Along the way, she taught me more of the Chicago history I have come to expect and appreciate.

Her own unique category

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