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The Sleeping Sisters
A Novel
Contributors
Formats and Prices
- On Sale
- Aug 18, 2026
- Page Count
- 496 pages
- Publisher
- Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN-13
- 9780316608008
Price
$32.00Price
$42.00 CADFormat
Format:
- Trade Paperback (Large Print) $32.00 $42.00 CAD
- ebook $14.99 $19.99 CAD
- Hardcover $30.00 $40.00 CAD
- Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $27.99
Preorder from Retailers:
“A marvelously strange story of murder and motherhood. . . . I have no idea how to describe what I just read, but it was really, really cool.” —T. Kingfisher, author of What Moves the Dead
A mother’s love is the oldest curse
Fortuna Miércoles has finally moved her family to a better neighborhood across the Rio Grande, desperate to outrun the curse that’s stalked her bloodline since her greatest grandmother crossed the desert with a cactus thorn splitting her throat. But burying a family’s violent legacy—or her own haunting secret—isn’t so easy. Twenty years ago, girls and women vanished into the Albuquerque night, their bones later unearthed on the mesa. The so-called Reaper was never caught. Now, beneath the dormant volcanoes called the Sleeping Sisters, the killings have begun again, and they’ve called forth something in Fortuna that she has long fought to keep buried…
Detective Jeanette Palacio has spent decades promising justice to the ghosts of her murdered cousins—alongside the memory of the other women she couldn’t avenge. When a new body turns up in Fortuna’s backyard, both women are pulled into a dangerous, ancient plot. Are the Sleeping Sisters awakening—or has someone in Fortuna’s family set a trap?
Inspired by true events, The Sleeping Sisters begins as a taut mystery shot through with myth and a Chicana-Indigenous reimagining of the legend of the headless woman—but by its cataclysmic end has spiraled into a fevered, feral hymn to motherhood and a mesmerizing portrait of trauma and the monstrous bargains we make to protect those we love.
Genre:
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“House of Spirits meets The Wire in this marvelously strange story of murder and motherhood; a gloriously surreal novel in which magical realism meets police procedural. Jenn Givhan twists your brain and leaves you looking at the world differently for a long time afterward. I have no idea how to describe what I just read, but it was really, really cool.”T. Kingfisher, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of What Moves the Dead
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“A haunting mystery and a fierce ode to motherhood, written indelibly in sandstone and basalt. It will lodge in your heart like a cactus spine.”Nat Cassidy, author of When the Wolf Comes Home and Mary
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“A folkloric masterpiece. Givhan winds a story as supple and horrifying as a bloody silk ribbon, and the result is electrifying. Part ode to the monstrosity of matrescence and part invective against injustice, The Sleeping Sisters is a story from which I could not look away. I loved every page.”Taylor Grothe, author of Lethal Kiss
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"A scary story told over campfires is taken to new heights in The Sleeping Sisters, part horror, part mystery with stunning prose that will linger long after the last page is turned. With compassion and care, Jennifer Givhan expertly weaves Chicana and Indigenous folklore with real crimes and ignored issues -- an absolute must-read."Vanessa Lillie, bestselling author of Blood Sisters
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“A gorgeously written mystery that kept me up at night and left me thinking of its characters in the days to come. It’s everything I love in a novel — a wily mystery, blood-stirring Indigenous folklore, and complicated ties to land and family. I devoured this novel; I was swept along pages brimming with suspense, where no one is who they seem. The Sleeping Sisters has a permanent space on my bookshelf!”Laurie L. Dove, author of Mask of the Deer Woman
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“Jennifer Givhan’s The Sleeping Sisters is as brutal as it is beautiful. When teenage girls are found decapitated in Albuquerque, one mother begins to fear the violence haunting her community may be rooted in her own bloodline. What unfolds is part crime novel, part fever dream, part reckoning with inherited trauma and religious hypocrisy. Givhan writes with a raw, lyrical intensity most writers spend a lifetime trying to unlock, turning myth and memory into something sharp, unsettling, and, at times, devastating. This is a bold, haunting novel about generational violence and the women who refuse to stay buried."Carter Wilson, USA Today bestselling author of Tell Me What You Did
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"The sun-drenched brutality of Jennifer Givhan's The Sleeping Sisters burns right through its readers' retinas, blinding in its savage humanity and voracious heartache. This haunting elegy to twice told tales—and our mothers who tell them—is absolutely volcanic, ready to erupt on your bookshelf if you don't read it straight away."Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
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“A twisty, of-the-moment supernatural thriller, equal parts magical realism and police procedural. Givhan writes with a vibrancy and absolute surety.”Keith Rosson, author of Coffin Moon
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"Simultaneously lyrical, propulsive, and brimming with heart, The Sleeping Sisters gifts us with prose so sharp that it cuts to the bone. Folklore is alive in these pages, following richly drawn characters through the blood that connects them. In sharing these stories, these voices, Givhan works her roots on us—and I gladly succumbed to her spell."Carson Faust, author of If the Dead Belong Here
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“The Sleeping Sisters is cataclysmic. Givhan’s thunderous voice will break you open and etch itself into your bones. This book is an enthralling and ferocious page-turner with lyrical prose that interweaves gripping tension with the visceral ache of motherhood.”Rios de la Luz, author of Itzá
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"A chilling exploration of motherhood, murder, grief, and deep secrets, this book further solidifies Jennifer Givhan's place amongst contemporary literary greats. Simply put: The Sleeping Sisters is a masterpiece of Southwestern Gothic fiction."Pedro Iniguez, author of Fever Dreams of a Parasite
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"A powerful, absorbing novel. I devoured it, unable to look away from its horrors. Most importantly, I didn't want to. An astonishing work of reclamation and remembrance for the women and girls who haunt, and for the ones who refuse to let them down."Natalia Theodoridou, author of Sour Cherry
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“Jennifer Givhan brings a poet's ear for language to a propulsive mystery-thriller, and the combination is remarkable. In The Sleeping Sisters, she fuses lyrical horror with genuine narrative drive, delivering unexpected twists while maintaining control of her prose. Drawing on the unresolved West Mesa murders and the myth of the headless woman, the novel is grounded in Albuquerque with intelligence, specificity, and deep respect for place. A brilliant book by a writer who understands both language and plot.”Alisa Valdes, author of Hollow Beasts
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Praise for Salt Bones
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"A triumph. One of the most masterful marriages of horror, mystery, thriller, and literary writing."The Los Angeles Times
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“A mystery spiked with horror, magical realism, and stunning prose, this book cast a spell on me.”Ana Reyes, author of The House in the Pines
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“Givhan mesmerizes. . . . Weaving folklore, mystery, and horror into a breathtaking tapestry. It’s a stunning examination of generational trauma.”Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“Givhan perfectly balances the supernatural with human themes of grief and love. A timely novel that deals with the treatment of Latina women. For fans of character-driven suspense and the magical realism of Isabel Allende, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Victor LaValle.”Library Journal (starred review)
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“Jennifer Givhan’s lyricism and rich storytelling immediately snatch you into this irresistible world of secrets, grief, and horror.”Tananarive Due, author of The Reformatory
