Cynthia Pelayo – författare

The Mexican board game of Lotería is a game of chance—similar to bingo. However, in Lotería instead of matching up numbers on a game board, players match up images. There are 54 cards in the Lotería game, and for this short story collection you will find one unique story per card based on a Latin American myth, folklore, superstition, or belief—with a slant towards the paranormal and horrific. In this deck of cards you will find murderers, ghosts, goblins and ghouls. This collection features creatures and monsters, vampires, werewolves and more.Many of these legends existed long before their European counterparts—passed throughout the Americas via word of mouth, collected just like the tales the Brothers Grimm. These are indeed fairy tales—Latin American fairy tales—but with a horrifying slant.

From a Bram Stoker Award-winning author, this horrifying retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale set in present-day Chicago is an edge of your seat thrill ride. ‪When Detective Lauren Medina sees the calling card at a murder scene in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood, she knows the Pied Piper has returned. When another teenager is brutally murdered at the same lagoon where her sister's body was found floating years before, she is certain that the Pied Piper is not just back, he's looking for payment he's owed from her.Lauren's torn between protecting the city she has sworn to keep safe, and keeping a promise she made long ago with her sister's murderer. She may have to ruin her life by exposing her secrets and lies to stop the Pied Piper before he collects.

From a Bram Stoker Award-winning author, a cult horror fan discovers that something sinister is at the heart of a series of brutal killings in Chicago.A fabled lost movie. An increasing body count. How much do you risk for art?Paloma has been watching the Grand Vespertilio Show her entire life. Grand, America's most beloved horror host, showcases classic, low-budget and cult horror movies with a flourish, wearing his black tuxedo and hat-but Paloma has noticed something strange about Grand.After Paloma's husband, a homicide detective, discovers an obscure movie poster pinned on a mutilated corpse, she knows that the only person that can help solve this mystery is Grand. When another body appears at an abandoned historic movie palace, the deaths prove to be connected to a silent film, lost to the ages, but somehow at the center of countless tragedies in Chicago. Paloma soon becomes trapped between protecting a silent movie that's contributed to so much death in her city and the life of her young son.With The Shoemaker's Magician, Cynthia Pelayo continues to establish herself as one of the most powerful voices in riveting, thought-provoking dark fiction.

A city’s haunted history and fairy-tale horrors converge for two women in an addictive novel of psychological suspense by a multiple Bram Stoker Award–nominated author.Sisters Anna and Jennie live in a historic bungalow on the Chicago River. They’re tethered to a disquieting past, and with nowhere else to go, nothing can part them from their family home. Not the maddening creaks and disembodied voices that rattle the old walls. Not the inexplicable drownings in the area, or the increasing number of bodies that float by Anna’s window.To stave off loneliness, Anna has a podcast, spinning ghostly tales of Chicago’s tragic history. But when Anna captures the attention of an ardent male listener, she awakens to the possibilities of a world outside.As their relationship grows, so do Jennie’s fears. More and more people are going missing in the river. And then two detectives come calling.They’re looking for a link between the mysteries of the river and what’s housed on the bank. Even Anna and Jennie don’t understand how dreadful it is—and still can be—when the truth about their unsettled lives begins to surface.

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.

Dive into the chilling depths of Latiné horror with Something Followed Us Home, edited by Bram Stoker Award–winner Cynthia Pelayo, a groundbreaking anthology where each story reimagines immigration, colonization, faith, and folklore as the fears we inherit and carry across borders and generations.Something followed us home. It crawled in with our prayers, slipped into our beds, watched from mirrors, waited in water, and learned our names. In these stories, horror does not announce itself. It possesses, feeds, whispers, and waits. Gathering chilling work from some of today’s most acclaimed Latiné voices, this anthology moves through haunted households, brutal landscapes, sacred spaces turned dangerous, and bodies claimed by forces both ancient and intimate. The dead murmur behind locked doors. Bones rebuild themselves under merciless suns. Love becomes a doorway for demonic hunger. Prayers summon answers that arrive too late…or too fully. Blood, devotion, and memory intertwine as the past presses back with teeth. Something Followed Us Home is a landmark anthology of Latiné horror. These stories remind us that the past is never gone, the dead are never silent, and the places we come from will always find their way back to us. Featuring stories by: Agustina Bazterrica, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Cynthia Pelayo, Isabel Cañas, Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Zoraida Córdova, Mariana Enriquez, Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, Ananda Lima, Xochitl Gonzalez, Leopoldo Goût, Juan Martinez, Mónica Ojeda, Daniel Jóse Older, Lilliam Rivera, Alex Segura, Diana Rodriguez Wallach

Sumérgete en las espeluznantes profundidades del terror latino con Lo que nos siguió a casa, editada por la ganadora del Premio Bram Stoker Cynthia Pelayo. Una antología revolucionaria en la que participan Agustina Bazterrica, Isabel Cañas, Mariana Enríquez, Zoraida Córdova y más, donde cada historia viste la inmigración, la colonización, la fe y el folklore, de miedos que heredamos y que nos acompañan a través de las fronteras y las generaciones.Lo que nos siguió a casa, editada por la ganadora del Premio Bram Stoker Cynthia Pelayo, es una antología revolucionaria del terror latino que abre una puerta imaginaria al mundo ancestral del miedo y los fantasmas culturales. La colección incluye el trabajo de aclamados escritores, como Agustina Bazterrica, Isabel Cañas, Mariana Enríquez, Zoraida Córdova, Gerardo Sámano Córdova, la propia Pelayo, y muchos más; cada uno de ellos reinventando el horror a través de las lentes de la colonización, la inmigración, la fe y el folklore que perdura a lo largo de las generaciones. Las historias que recoge van desde hogares argentinos donde los muertos susurran tras puertas cerradas con llave, a desiertos en los que La Huesera reconstruye sus huesos bajo un sol implacable, a aguas caribeñas en las que cruceros placenteros se tornan predatorios, y ciudades en las que el amor y el hambre demoníaca comparten cuerpo. Ya sean plegarias susurradas contra demonios, visiones de rebeldes ahorcados que regresan en forma de sombras, o el terrorífico hecho de que la propia tierra recuerda la sangre, cada pieza es un testimonio de la resiliencia y el horror asentado en la identidad latina. Lo que nos siguió a casa, es una antología de referencia para el terror latino. Estas historias nos recuerdan que el pasado nunca nos abandona, los muertos nunca guardan silencio, y los lugares de los que venimos siempre hallarán el camino de vuelta a nosotros.Dive into the chilling depths of Latiné horror with Something Followed Us Home, edited by Bram Stoker Award–winner Cynthia Pelayo, a groundbreaking anthology where each story reimagines immigration, colonization, faith, and folklore as the fears we inherit and carry across borders and generations. Something followed us home. It crawled in with our prayers, slipped into our beds, watched from mirrors, waited in water, and learned our names. In these stories, horror does not announce itself. It possesses, feeds, whispers, and waits. Gathering chilling work from some of today’s most acclaimed Latiné voices, this anthology moves through haunted households, brutal landscapes, sacred spaces turned dangerous, and bodies claimed by forces both ancient and intimate. The dead murmur behind locked doors. Bones rebuild themselves under merciless suns. Love becomes a doorway for demonic hunger. Prayers summon answers that arrive too late…or too fully. Blood, devotion, and memory intertwine as the past presses back with teeth. Something Followed Us Home is a landmark anthology of Latiné horror. These stories remind us that the past is never gone, the dead are never silent, and the places we come from will always find their way back to us. Featuring stories by: Agustina Bazterrica, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Cynthia Pelayo, Isabel Cañas, Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Zoraida Córdova, Mariana Enríquez, Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, Ananda Lima, Xochitl Gonzalez, Leopoldo Goût, Juan Martinez, Mónica Ojeda, Daniel Jóse Older, Lilliam Rivera, Alex Segura, Diana Rodriguez Wallach