The Vanishing Station

The trains are not what they seem

Eighteen-year-old Filipino American Ruby Santos has been unmoored since her mother’s death. She’s always dreamed of going to art school, but instead, she and her father have had to move into the basement of their home and rent out the main floor while they work to pay back her mother’s hospital bills.

Then Ruby finds out her father has been living a secret life as a delivery person for a magical underworld—he “jumps” train lines to help deliver packages for a powerful family. Recently, he’s fallen behind on deliveries (and deeper into a fog of alcohol), and if his debts aren’t satisfied, they’re going to take her mother’s house. So Ruby volunteers to take over her dad’s contract and start jumping train lines herself.

But this is no ordinary job. Ruby soon realizes that the trains are much more than doors to romance and adventure: They’re also doors to trafficking illicit goods and the sites of fierce rivalries. As she becomes more entangled with the magical underworld and the mysterious, way-too-handsome boy who’s helping her to learn magic, she realizes too late that she may be in over her head …

“Prepare yourself for nuanced characterization, aching romance, and a slick underground world that you’ve never seen before … just don’t get too close to the tracks.”—Emily J. Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel Magnifique