Agent: Lisa Rodgers, JABberwocky Literary Agency. The nightmarish setting, frequent surprises, and inherent ambiguity will appeal to fans of Seanan McGuire’s books. The characters, including queer, racially diverse, and variously abled teens, are well-developed, amplifying readers’ engagement in the high stakes. In fact, I felt that way about all Kate Alice Marshall’s books, so if you enjoyed Rules for Vanishing, be sure to read her other work too.

I loved it and devoured it in a few days. It is dark, mysterious, creepy, and full of scary and supernatural stuff. Framed as a series of post-incident interviews and supplemented with found camera footage, videos, and texts, this multilayered, unpredictable nail-biter reveals the truth one fragment at a time. Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall is not a typical YA novel about teen runaways. Mungiu based the film on an actual 2020 event in Ditrau, Romania, where 1,800 villagers voted to expel. In this chilling tale, Marshall ( I Am Still Alive) ties together regional folklore, urban legends, and ghost stories to craft an exquisitely unsettling dark fantasy. To Csillas horror, the villagers, including the local doctor and pastor, want them gone. Traveling a supernatural road through a deadly darkness, they enter a world filled with myriad terrors and dangers, where breaking the rules leads to a horrible fate. Now, mysterious texts point Sara and her friends on the same harrowing journey in hopes of finding Becca. While searching for Lucy, Sara Donoghue’s sister, Becca, disappeared a year earlier. Local legend holds that the nearby woods are home to the ghost of Lucy Gallows, who vanished decades ago outside Briar Glen, Mass.

Rules for vanishing