Bram Stoker Award winning author and poet Cynthia Pelayo (Children of Chicago, The Shoemaker’s Magician, Lotería, Forgotten Sisters, Vanishing Daughters, the poetry collections Crime Scene, Into the Forest and All the Way Through) returns with her upcoming novel It Came from Neverland, for which we're excited to exclusively reveal the cover today.
Hitting shelves on June 9, 2026 from Crooked Lane Books, It Came from Neverland is described as Peter Pan meets Stephen King’s It in a twisted horror retelling of a classic childhood fairytale set during World War I:
1914. Wendy Darling works by day as a school teacher and by night, she assists soldiers who have returned home from the Western Front. There is one mysterious patient who despite all the care they’ve given him, is in a deep sleep, unable to wake up. One night, when he murmurs the words “Peter Pan,” Wendy is thrown back to a darker time, one that she wishes she could forget.
When one of her students goes missing, it brings back memories of when children went missing and were later found murdered in London many years ago. Wendy believes that Peter Pan, the entity that she believed killed those children, is back. She and her brothers had a close encounter with Peter Pan, after all. But her brothers only remember Peter Pan and Neverland as a fantasy of childhood games.
When another child goes missing and signs start to point to Wendy, Scotland Yard digs into old reports, finding that Wendy knew the names of all the children who had been killed. As Wendy tries to prove her innocence, she also has to find a way to stop Peter Pan once and for all.
No stranger to adapting the darkness of fairy tale and children's stories, Pelayo previously shared what draws her to the genre as an author:
I turn to fairy tales because they are a place of comfort for me, and yes, I do realize how grim and gruesome fairy tales can be. Many fairy tales are warnings, life lessons, or even tales of inspiration and hope […] I grew up with stories of glass slippers, magical apples, enchanted mirrors, and helpers and villains lurking in the woods. I imagine too that these are the tales that many others were first told as well, and so there is an aspect of familiarity in reading a fairy tale adaptation or spotting a fairy tale device in a modern-day story.
If am reading or watching a fairy tale adaptation, or even writing one, I know if I stay on the path through the dark wood then I will be safe, that at the end of the journey all will be well. Many fairy tales grant us the promise of a happily ever after, regardless of the monsters that lurk in the world.
Illustrated by Marcela Bolivar, It Came from Neverland‘s understated yet eerie cover captures what we're in for with the horror retelling of J.M. Barrie's 1911 novel. Check it out below and make sure to pre-order your copy of It Came from Neverland from your local bookstore.
