Missing Person Fiction

For millions of Londoners, the morning of 17 December is just like any other. But not for Sam Wren. An hour after leaving home, he gets onto a tube train, and never gets off again. No eyewitnesses. No trace of him on security cameras. Six months later, he's still missing. Out of options and desperate for answers, Sam's wife, Julia, hires David Raker to track him down.

When Kelsey Hart disappeared three years ago, her older sister, Brit, never gave up hope. But as time passed, and she heard nothing from her sister, she knew she needed help. Enter PI Harry Starke, the man with a reputation for solving the impossible cases. As Harry digs into Kelsey’s disappearance, he quickly realizes that nothing is as it seems. Slowly, he uncovers dark secrets and a web of lies that will shake the Hart family to its core. And with every clue he uncovers, the mystery deepens, and people begin to die.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of You Were Gone by Tim Weaver. Three days after Christmas, a woman walks into a police station. She has no phone and no ID, just a piece of paper with the name of investigator David Raker on it. She tells officers that Raker is her husband. When he turns up at the station, Raker is stunned. The woman looks exactly like his wife. She knows all about their marriage, their history, even private conversations the two of them had. There's just one problem: Raker's wife has been dead for eight years....

It was meant to be a harmless stag-night prank. But a few hours later, the groom has disappeared and his friends are dead. With only three days to the wedding, Roy Grace is contacted by the man’s distraught fiancée to unearth what happened on that fateful night. The one man who ought to know of the groom’s whereabouts is saying nothing. But then he has a lot more to gain than anyone realizes, for one man’s disaster is another man’s fortune.

Boston, 1982. Private investigator Andy Roark has spent the past decade trying to rediscover his place in the world. In Vietnam, there was order and purpose. Everything - no matter how brutal - happened for a reason. Deborah Swift, wealthy wife of an aspiring California politician, is trying to trace her father, last seen on Cape Cod, who walked out on her and her mother long ago. Other investigators have turned up nothing, but Roark's local connections might give him an edge.

Buried secrets only spread. Erin's brother Bryan has been missing for five years. It was as if he simply walked into the forests of the Pacific Northwest and vanished. Determined to uncover the truth, Erin heads to the foothills of Mt. Hood where Bryan was last seen alive. He isn’t the first hiker to go missing in this area, and their cases go unsolved. When she discovers the corpse of a local woman in a creek, Erin unknowingly puts herself in the crosshairs of very powerful forces—from this world and beyond—hell-bent on keeping their secrets buried.

A missing girl returns unharmed, and a family torn apart by tragedy begins to heal. But strange things start to happen to the Wick family. The media are tipped off, throwing them into a spotlight they cannot hide from. DNA results go missing. Holes begin to appear in the girl’s story. Is the mysterious girl Abigail Wick? Who is the stranger on the boat who took Abigail? What happened 14 years ago? Only one person knows the truth.

DI Joe Faraday is called to the scene of a brutal death: the remains of a body have been chained to the railway line at Buriton tunnel, just north of Havant. Faraday has no name and no obvious leads to follow. DC Paul Winter is ordered to trawl through the missing persons list and comes across a missing man he suspects has fallen victim to foul play. Two men, one dead, one missing. Two detectives looking for them. Two stories entangled in the most bizarre and compelling ways.

2:00 a.m. Just outside of Toulouse, France, an obscure warehouse sits in the middle of a forgotten orchard. A monstrous evil is hidden away within its musty interior where four men have gathered in secret conclave. Powerful men—and ruthless beyond comprehension—they comprise the core of a multi-national cartel dealing in Holocaust art stolen by the Nazi’s during World War II. The purpose of their nocturnal gathering is to determine the fate of one of their own. Six hundred kilometers away, in Villefranche-sur-Mer, Jake Moriarity is enjoying blissful days and balmy nights in Gaspard ...

Don Kane lost his long time job as the go-to guy for detective fiction at the Who Done It bookstore in Pasadena, California. With three young daughters and an ambitious wife to support him, he applied his knowledge of the classics to remake himself in the tradition of his fictional heroes. With no clients beating a path to his door and mounting bills to pay, Kane's on the verge of calling it quits when his kindly landlord is mugged by a kid with an ivy tattoo, propelling Kane, ready or not, into the real world of private investigation.

Witness to Silence: Tales of Vanished Friends is a haunting collection of gripping short stories by G.J. Fene, exploring the chilling moment when someone you love simply… vanishes. From eerie carnivals and dark forests to chaotic protests and midnight highways, each story immerses readers in tales of friends who disappear without a trace—and the ones left behind, desperate for answers. Blending mystery, thriller, and supernatural elements, these tales pulse with raw emotion, psychological tension, and the chilling question: What if the ones we’ve lost are still out there, watching us ...

Seventeen-year-old Cia lived in a house of secrets until she was five, when her father literally burned it all down. The price of his clandestine operation? Cia’s entire family, and her leg. So, when her best friend Alice says she has a secret too, Cia wants nothing to do with it—even if it could shed light on her family’s dark past. But Alice doesn’t let go so easily, especially when her search for answers might help find Noah, the boy who broke her heart before going missing two months ago. But then the police find Alice’s body floating in the quarry.

Remi and her sisters, Maeve and Eliana, have a knack for stumbling into murder mysteries. And after a killer family camping trip last year, they’re back together for a Halloween they’ll never forget. Remi is living her best life in Seattle until Eliana’s husband, Chad, who refused to sign their divorce papers, disappears on the spookiest night of the year. Eliana swears she has no idea where he is, though her obvious motive and weird behavior don’t really weigh in her favor. Nor does the severed finger they find in his house…

In the seemingly idyllic town of Maplewood, darkness lurks beneath the surface, threatening to unravel the lives of those who inhabit it. When Emma Sinclair, a bright and compassionate young woman, suddenly disappears without a trace, her friends—Claire, Lucas, and Sarah—find themselves plunged into a web of secrets, manipulation, and fear. As they search for answers, they encounter a mysterious stranger with knowledge of Emma’s fate. He warns them of a dangerous game being played by an elusive group that preys on the vulnerable, and the deeper they dig, the more they realize that not...

Something bad happened here. When Case arrives at a run-down, ivy-covered house tucked deep in the West Texas woods, an ashy haze lingers in the air and the sky is tissue-paper pink. Her best friend Drea has been living here with a few classmates Case has never met, and Drea asked her to visit in a letter dated two weeks ago.

After a nightmare brings clarity to a hazy memory of childhood trauma, Sylvia Wilcox starts to replay the event in her mind. As she digs through the twisted details, struggling to recover lost innocence, she uncovers multiple levels of deception and betrayal. Finally, after decades of mystery, the disturbing and unexpected answers begin to appear before her eyes.

A canceled wedding, missing guests and a plane crash. What else could go wrong? Determined to find her absent father, Grace turns away from friends to go it alone. But they’re not just friends. They’re the Initiative, a secret covert operation, created to help those in need. Her fiancée begs her to let them help and tell him where she is. Will Grace come to realize she needs the team and especially Chase’s love and support? *Grace is a standalone read*

A woman goes missing in the woods; a man from her past goes looking; he finds that people aren’t the only ones who commit murder—places do it too. Tim Kitchens can’t let things go. It’s one of the reasons the exes keep piling up in his life: ex-prosecutor, ex-husband, ex-homeowner. That last one has brought him here, back to the Pacific Northwest, back to the house he grew up in and the small town that raised him. His friends are still around, but the girlfriend he left behind is gone—missing for five years. Something about it won’t let him go. He searches for her, and the new ...

When Leonard and Ellie Franks leave London for retirement in secluded Dartmoor everything seems perfect. Until their new life is shattered. One evening Leonard heads outside to fetch firewood - and never returns. Nine months later, with the investigation at a dead end, Leonard's family turn to David Raker - a missing persons investigator. Nothing could prepare Raker for what he uncovers.

Stroud's best years are behind him. A former war photographer, he's seen things no one should have to see. He left the front line before his luck ran out. His best friend and mentor, Vincent Raphael, was not so fortunate and died in an explosion. His body was never recovered; his friends buried an empty box. But then Stroud gets a call from his old editor, Marcus Haig. Two months ago Raphael was photographed in Istanbul. Stroud doesn't believe it's him, but there's money on the table for Stroud to go out there and prove he's dead.