The Daughters

A grieving archivist uncovers a strange connection between recent disappearances and a small New York town’s history of witch trials in this new thriller from the author of The Bequest.

Reeling from the dual deaths of her estranged father and ex-fiancé, Genevieve Tompkins has dropped out of her PhD program in New York City and is looking for a chance to start over in Wilton Springs, a faded Victorian spa town in upstate New York. Utilizing her background as an archivist, she is hired to catalogue the papers of the prominent Wilton family, who trace their lineage back to the founders of the town. But as she digs into their records, Genevieve discovers that the family’s pharmaceutical business and their personal lives have been fraught with a history of tragedy. She also uncovers a series of disturbing disappearances and suspicious deaths among the women of the town.

Three centuries earlier, Wilton Springs was the site of a brutal witch trial–a fact which someone has gone to extreme lengths to erase from historical record. As Genevieve explores the connections between the modern disappearances and the town’s ugly past, she becomes entangled in a web of conspiracy, where the line between superstition and reality begins to blur, and she fears she may become the next woman to go missing from Wilton Springs. . .

Blending elements of Gothic fiction and folk horror, The Daughters is a literary thriller that will keep readers guessing how the mysteries of the distant past may reverberate and resurface in the sinister and atmospheric present.

Indie Bookstore Preorder Campaign

Preorder The Daughters from one of the following independent bookstores to receive an exclusive “Words Are Spells” enamel pin:

• Book Passage
• Greedy Reads
• The Mysterious Bookshop
• The Poisoned Pen
• Thunder Road Books

Readers will eagerly await Margaret’s next.”
―Publishers Weekly

Spellbinding—a novel that braids homespun folk horror, conspiracy-theory paranoia, and full-blooded heartbreak. Readers of Gothic suspense will rejoice, certainly, but The Daughters should enchant book clubs, too; it’s that rare thriller that you want to thrust into a friend’s hands and say, ‘Read this right now and tell me what you think.'”
—A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

After her father’s death, Genevieve Tompkins abandons her PhD program and escapes to Wilton Springs, a small upstate New York spa town, where she’s accepted a job as a private archivist for the wealthy and well-connected Wilton family. But locals whisper that the Wiltons are cursed. And soon after Genevieve’s arrival, a library patron disappears and a dismembered body is found in the woods. As Genevieve digs deeper into the family’s archives, she uncovers a troubling legacy of false accusations, greed, and bloodshed—all justified by the whisper of a single word: witch. And when one of Genevieve’s new friends goes missing, she realizes the past isn’t buried—it’s bleeding into the present.
Dark, gripping, and atmospheric, The Daughters is a haunting exploration of buried secrets, corrupt power, and the deadly cost of greed. I couldn’t put it down!”
—Lauren Nossett, author of The Professor

Joanna Margaret is the author of The Bequest and The Daughters. Her short story “Malena” appears in A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers, and she received her MFA from NYU, where Joyce Carol Oates served as her thesis advisor. Before turning to writing fiction, Joanna Margaret was a historian, with a PhD from the University of St. Andrews, whose previous writing and scholarly work focused on Florentine aristocrats in sixteenth-century France.