The best missing person books

Can you tell Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite fairytales to read in all its retellings? This one is set in our modern world. It takes a look at the ugly side of bullying in high school, a murder mystery, ghosts, money extortion, lots of people keeping secrets, and through all of this, two people have to learn to see into each other’s hearts.

Holly Black co-wrote the Spiderwick Chronicles and knows her stuff. I found this series of graphic novels extremely entertaining, and chillingly true to the old legends. Black takes old legends from several Eurocentric cultures and has them coexisting in one single city, as just people, trying to make it. Poor Rue, the main character, is only half-human. When she finds out her mother is one of "the good neighbors"-- a fairy princess, she has to venture to her grandfather's realm to find her, meanwhile, a swan maiden is murdered up the street, and nixies steal her boyfriend. The drama of the series was riveting, as were the legends she called upon.

The night Hannah’s husband vanishes, a young girl hands Hannah a note that reads “protect her.” The “her” in question is Hannah’s teenage stepdaughter Bailey. But from whom or what she needs protection is a mystery. So Hannah and Bailey set off to solve that mystery and, they hope, reunite their family. The mystery proceeds at a cracking pace, and the amateur sleuths make rookie mistakes that any crime fiction could have told them were bad ideas. But along the way, Hannah and Bailey’s rocky, arm’s-length relationship deepens into something real. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, so I’ll just say that Hannah’s personal code and her strength of character lingered with me long after I finished this book.

I read books for all ages, because good stories transcend age, gender, race, etc. I love books that teach me something new, especially those with smart, sassy, and determined female protagonists. Maya and the Rising Dark is a delightful middle-grade read, with an empowered 12-year-old girl leading the way. Rich with diversity, I loved journeying into the mythology of the Orisha gods with Maya and her friends

Anne Tyler is one of my favorite authors. I am always drawn to her portraits of family dynamics through the lens of her quirky characters. She presents them in a way that moves beyond their quirks and negative qualities; we see them with their contradictions and failings amid the texture of their daily lives. We follow her characters through their difficulties and hard-won unexpected discoveries about themselves.

In this novel, a woman simply walks away from her family, leaving them on a beach in Delaware. We follow her life as she chooses a new identity and an independent life — a fantasy for many women, including myself. Like Delia, I have often felt like getting up and walking away. I call it my Ladder of Years Day.

Not many books are both frightening and funny, but Kupersmith’s debut novel certainly checks those boxes for me. Like Winnie, a young American in Vietnam, I taught English abroad for a couple of years in my early twenties, and I laughed in recognition of her experiences and outlook early in the novel. But as I turned the pages, I found myself more and more spooked by the hauntings and possessions (not to mention the snakes), and ultimately very moved by the characters and plot. Kupersmith lays out several narratives and then plaits them together, but it’s so gradual that you don’t see how enmeshed all the characters are until you’re neck-deep in the book. It’s horror and humor and history, all rolled into one.

Ghost Girl is wonderfully spooky with true, relatable characters that I instantly cared about and rooted for. This novel has so much heart and touched me on so many levels. The scary, tense action kept me on the edge of my seat, and when characters were forced to confront their fear, loss, and pain, I found myself thinking about times in my life when I faced challenging situations. The friendships, the growth, and empowerment of the characters, and the belief we can overcome anything were what touched me the most. 

I picked up Then She Was Gone at a thrift store, thinking it would be a quick, fun read while I was at the beach. Quick read, yes. Fun…? Not so much. Then She Was Gone had me flipping the pages faster than a snake can hiss. As the story unraveled, I found myself muttering “oh no, no…no way” more than once. The story was both heart-wrenching and disturbing, and it lingered with me long after I’d closed the book. It touches on love, marriage, motherhood, loss, grief, and shattered hopes. It’s not a feel-good book, but it’s a really good read. I love stories that drag me over the rough road but also hit me in the heart, and Then She Was Gone delivers.

There are some writers I read purely for the pleasure of a well-written sentence. Don is one of those, because he is a Literary Writer™ – he edited one of the premier literary journals for many years. But here’s the thing – he is also one hell of a plotter. This first novel of his caught the letters community by surprise, but not me; the intricate construction of his short stories could only lead to a tale as labyrinthine as this one. Featuring classic mystery tropes, Country of Origin is a missing person case that leads our hero, an American Embassy officer in Tokyo, to seedy strip clubs, dangerous love affairs, and the CIA, all delivered with surgical prose that would make Raymond Chandler blush.

The love of a mother and child is one that is dear to my heart, and so I was absolutely captivated by this book. A little girl’s desperate longing for the mother who mysteriously disappeared a decade earlier takes readers on a journey that is both strange and wondrous at the same time. I love a book that teaches me something, and Jodi Picoult elegantly weaves together the nature of motherhood in both humans and elephants in a way that adds depth and beauty to the story. Add to this a psychic medium who the main character, Jenna, employs to help her along the way, and I’m hooked. This story crosses time, space, life, and death all the way through to its shocking ending – which I never saw coming.