Why am I passionate about this?

When I began compiling stories for my collection, I noted the theme of disappearance throughout. I’m not sure why that’s the case. Perhaps because I’ve dealt with disappearance on a personal level. Perhaps almost all stories deal with the theme. I have also always been fascinated by people who disappear (such as Agatha Christie), especially into the wild. As a former book editor, my reading standards are very high. The books I’ve recommended are superb and still resonate with me years after I’ve read them. I hope you explore this list and that the characters in these unique and well-crafted stories linger on, even after you’ve finished the last page.


I wrote

How We Disappear: Novella & Stories

By Tara Lynn Masih,

Book cover of How We Disappear: Novella & Stories

What is my book about?

In How We Disappear, award-winning author Tara Lynn Masih offers readers transporting and compelling stories of those taken, those…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Outlander

Tara Lynn Masih Why did I love this book?

This evocative historical novel, set in 1903 in the Western Canadian wilderness, is one of my favorite novels. Mary Boulton, newly made a widow by her own hand, flees her vengeful brothers-in-law. This is the story of the hunted, and the ability of a woman to disappear as needed into the vast wild and survive on her own. A soft thriller, with lyrical prose. And one of the most memorable characters I’ve come across in this genre.

By Gil Adamson,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Outlander as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On a moonlit night in 1903, a mysterious young woman flees alone across the Canadian wilderness, one quick step ahead of her pursuers. Mary Boulton is nineteen years old, half mad, and widowed - by her own hand. Tearing through the forest with dogs howling in the distance, she is desperate, her nerves burning, and she is certain of one thing only - that her every move is being traced. Two red-headed brothers, rifles across their backs, lurch close behind her: monstrous figures, identical in every way, with the predatory look of hyenas. She has murdered their brother, and their…


Book cover of The Australia Stories

Tara Lynn Masih Why did I love this book?

This brief novel in stories was a pleasant surprise. I was completely drawn into the dry, unfamiliar landscape of the Australian Blue Mountains and loved that while the narrator is a young man coming to terms with his personal history, the theme of the book is the impact that the disappearance of both his grandmother and mother have on him as a boy and as a man trying to find himself in a relationship. Pierce deftly weaves in found memoirs and retrieved memories to create a bigger picture of life: how we both develop and lose ourselves, how place affects us, and how our actions can have a major impact on others.

By Todd James Pierce,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Australia Stories as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Haunted by the deaths of his mother and grandmother, both of whom perished while hiking through Australia’s Blue Mountains, Sam Browne returns to the country of his mother’s birth in search of his family’s history and a way to make a place for himself within it.
By reading his grandmother’s memoirs, Sam begins to connect to his family’s ancestral home and understand the reasons that she and her daughter after her were so drawn to the Australian landscape and the mystery found there.


Book cover of Sisters

Tara Lynn Masih Why did I love this book?

Daisy Johnson is a force of her own. I’ve read all three of her books and was the most taken with her more recent novel, Sisters. This has a moody, gothic feel to it. Very well narrated by one of the two sisters, and is the ultimate story about disappearance, and the traumatic effect it can have on a loved one. Brutal, surreal, and with a setting as real as its characters: a crumbling moldy cottage, near the shore, that lives and breathes with the characters. And includes a twist you won’t see coming.

By Daisy Johnson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sisters as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The electrifying novel from the Booker shortlisted author of Everything Under.

'A short sharp explosion of a gothic thriller' Observer

Something unspeakable has happened to sisters July and September.

Desperate for a fresh start, they move across the country to an old family house that has a troubled life of its own. Noises come from behind the walls. Lights flicker of their own accord. Sleep feels impossible, dreams are endless.

In their new, unsettling surroundings, July finds that the fierce bond she's always had with September - forged with a blood promise when they were children - is beginning to…


Book cover of Lava

Tara Lynn Masih Why did I love this book?

One of my working titles for my book was A Country All Its Own, a phrase pulled from this exquisite novel set in Hilo, Hawaii. Ball plays with the theme of disappearance throughout, and it’s basically the female version of Australia Stories. Kinau, the narrator, is also shaped by her mother’s stories and haunted by the disappearance of her father, and the death of her ex-husband's stepson, who comes to the island in search of his own destiny. Original and breathtaking in its craft and message, Ball is an accomplished storyteller.

By Pamela Ball,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lava as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A haunting tale of obsessive love, and how an otherwise strong young woman releases herself from it. What if you lived in a world where you could wake the dead, where men had a shark jaw buried in their backs just as the shark god did when he stepped on the shore and became human? A place where scalding lava ran through the streets of the town and down into the hissing sea. Where women picked up guns and never put them down again, where it rained three days out of three, and ghosts drank from the rain gutters and…


Book cover of When Breath Becomes Air

Tara Lynn Masih Why did I love this book?

My mother gifted me this book after the death of my father, which was a gut-wrenching event for the entire family and which mirrored Kalanithi’s ending. It’s the only nonfiction book on my list, but a very important one. Death is the ultimate disappearance, is it not? And something we all have to come to terms with in myriad ways. This book helps prepare us for the death of others and for our own final disappearance.

By Paul Kalanithi,

Why should I read it?

14 authors picked When Breath Becomes Air as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER**

'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal

What makes life worth living in the face of death?

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.

When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and…


Explore my book 😀

How We Disappear: Novella & Stories

By Tara Lynn Masih,

Book cover of How We Disappear: Novella & Stories

What is my book about?

In How We Disappear, award-winning author Tara Lynn Masih offers readers transporting and compelling stories of those taken, those missing, and those neither here nor gone-runaways, exiles, wanderers, ghosts, even the elusive Dame Agatha Christie. From the remote Siberian taiga to the harsh American frontier, from rural Long Island to postwar Belgium, Masih's characters are diverse in identity and circumstance, defying the burden of erasure by disappearing into or emerging from physical and emotional landscapes.

Described as "masterful" and as "striking and resonant" by Publishers Weekly, Masih's fiction, crossing boundaries between historical and contemporary, sparks with awareness that nothing and no one is ever gone for good—and that the wilderness is never quite behind us.

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Love Love TV

By Gabriel Ruesso,

Book cover of Love Love TV

Gabriel Ruesso

New book alert!

What is my book about?

Christopher Jope was supposed to be the next great celebrity heartthrob. But then he was demoted to third wheel in the supernatural throuple romance he starred in years ago. Now, he’s a B-list celebrity at best, struggling to find success in his work or love in his personal life. 

Things are looking up, though, when Christopher is tapped to be next season's star of the best trashy reality show on television. In Star x Lovers, ten bachelors and ten bachelorettes compete to try and win Christopher's heart and mind. The show is run by the charming yet jaded host Ted…

Love Love TV

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What is this book about?

Love Love TV is a 1st person bisexual romance novel that quickly morphs into a 'whodunnit' murder mystery. Fans of Agatha Christie meets Black Mirror will love this modern story about love, loss, reality TV, and being so famous it hurts.

Star x Lovers is the best trash reality show on TV. Twenty bachelors and bachelorettes on a gorgeous island try to win the heart of Christopher Jope, the B-list celebrity from an old, popular supernatural teenage series. Love Love TV, the secretive television network behind Star x Lovers, does a masterful job at getting as much drama out of…


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