Following is my list of works – short fiction, novels, theory, criticism, memoir, general nonfiction, and contemporary poetry collections – that develop the trope of disappearance. An additional list of articles will follow in coming months.

Plays

Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan and Other Plays [Mary Rose]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Dorfman, Ariel. Death and the Maiden. New York: Penguin, 1994.

Kennedy, Fin. How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found. London: Nick Hearn Books, 2008.

Short Stories

Bierce, Ambrose. The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce [“The Difficulty of Crossing a Field”]. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1984.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions [“The Man on the Threshold”]. New York: Penguin, 1999.

Chaon, Dan. Among the Missing. New York: Ballantine, 2002.

Davenport, Guy. A Table of Green Fields [“Belinda’s World Tour”]. New York: New Directions, 1993.

Desai, Anita. The Artist of Disappearance. New York: Harper Perennial, 2012.

Doctorow, E. L. All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories [“Wakefield”]. New York: Random House, 2012.

Doyle, Jacqueline. The Missing Girl. New York: Black Lawrence Press, 2017.

Doyle, Laurie Ann. World Gone Missing. Raleigh, NC: Regal House, 2017.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. In Household Words Vol. 3 (1851) [“Disappearances”]. Internet Archive.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Hawthorne’s Short Stories [“Wakefield”]. New York: Vintage, 2011.

Jackson, Shirley. Come Along With Me [“Louisa Please Come Home”]. New York: Viking, 1968.

—. “The Missing Girl.” New York: Penguin Random House, 2018.

Lawrence, D.H. The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Masih, Tara Lynn. How We Disappear: Novella & Stories. Winston-Salem, NC: Press 53, 2022.

McEwen, Ian. First Love, Last Rites [“Solid Geometry”] New York: Random House, 1975.

Murakami, Haruki. The Elephant Vanishes. New York: Vintage, 1994.

Porter, Andrew. The Theory of Light and Matter. New York: Vintage, 2010.

—. The Disappeared. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.

Stern, Daniel. Twice Upon a Time: Stories. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.

Stohlman, Nancy. After the Rapture. Baltimore, MD: Mason Jar Press, 2023.

Viramontes, Helena María. The Moths and Other Stories.  [“The Cariboo Cafe”] Houston: Arte Público Press, 1995.

Yanagita, Kunio. The Legends of Tono. Washington, D.C.: Lexington Books, 2008.

Novels

Abbott, Megan. The Song is You. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

—. The End of Everything. New York: Back Bay Books, 2012.

Abe, Kobe. The Ruined Map. New York: Vintage, 2001.

—. The Woman in the Dunes. New York: Vintage, 1991.

—. The Box Man. New York: Vintage, 2001.

—. Secret Rendezvous. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.

Alemán, Gabriela. Poso Wells. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2018.

Ansay, A. Manette. Sister. New York: Harper Perennial, 1997.

Archambeau, Robert. Alice B. Toklas is Missing. Raleigh, NC: Regal House, 2023.

Atwood, Margaret. Surfacing. New York: Anchor, 1998.

Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy. New York: Penguin, 2006.

—. Moon Palace. New York: Penguin, 1990.

—. The Brooklyn Follies. New York: Penguin, 2009.

—. Oracle Night. New York: St. Martin’s, 2009.

—. In the Country of Last Things. New York: Viking, 1987.

Azem, Ibtisam. The Book of Disappearance. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Publications in Continuing Education, 2019.

Balzac, Honoré de. Colonel Chabert. New York: New Directions, 1997.

Bambara, Toni Cade. Those Bones Are Not My Child. New York: Vintage, 2000.

Bauer, Belinda. Snap. New York: Grove Press, 2019.

Bennett, Brit. The Vanishing Half. New York: Riverhead Books, 2022.

Berti, Eduardo. La mujer de Wakefield. Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 2000.

Bicecci, Verónica Gerber. Empty Set. Minneapolis: Coffeehouse Press, 2018.

Bolaño, Roberto. Distant Star. New York: New Directions, 2004.

—. 2666. New York: Picador, 2009.

Bombal, María Luisa. House of Mist. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2008.

Braunstein, Sarah. The Sweet Relief of Missing Children. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012.

Buckhanon, Kalisha. Speaking of Summer. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2020.

—. Running to Fall. AALBC Aspire, 2022.

Busch, Frederick. Girls. New York: Ballantine, 1998.

—. North. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.

Ch’oi, Yun. The Last of Hanako. Seoul: Jimoondang, 2003.

Chraïbi, Driss. Flutes of Death. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997.

Codrescu, Andrei. Wakefield. New York: Algonquin Books, 2004.

D’Adesky, Anne-Christine. Under the Bone. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994.

Danticat, Edwige. The Dew Breaker. New York: Vintage, 2005.

—. Claire of the Sea Light. New York: Vintage, 2014.

Dave, Laura. The Last Thing He Told Me. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021.

Didion, Joan. A Book of Common Prayer. New York: Vintage, 1995.

Dyer, Geoff. The Search. Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2011.

Earling, Debra Magpie. Perma Red. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2022.

Englander, Nathan. The Ministry of Special Cases. New York: Vintage, 2008.

Ely, David. Seconds. New York: Harper Voyager, 2013.

Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl. Ballantine, 2014.

Follet, Barbara Newhall. The House Without Windows. New York: Penguin, 2021.

Fowles, John. A Maggot. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985.

Frisch, Max. I’m Not Stiller. Dallas: Dalkey Archive, 2006.

Fuentes, Carlos. The Old Gringo. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2007.

Garro, Elena. Recollections of Things to Come. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1969.

Green, Henry. Concluding. New York: New Directions, 2017.

Gutcheon, Beth. Still Missing. New York: William Morrow & Company, 2005.

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Vintage Crime, 2022.

Hawkins, Paula. Girl on a Train. New York: Riverhead Books, 2016.

Healey, Emma. Elizabeth is Missing. New York: Harper Perennial, 2015.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Torrents of Spring. New York: Scribner’s, 1998.

Herrera, Yuri. Signs Preceding the End of the World. Sheffield, UK: And Other Stories, 2015.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. When We Were Orphans. New York: Vintage, 2001.

Jabrā Ibrāhīm. Jabrā. In Search of Walid Masoud. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

Jackson, Shirley. Hangsaman. New York: Penguin, 2013.

Jones, Tayari. Leaving Atlanta. New York: Grand Central, 2023.

Jonnie, Brianna and Nshannacappo. If I Go Missing. Toronto: Lorimer Children & Teens, 2019.

Jordan, Neil. The Drowned Detective. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016.

Kafka, Franz. Amerika: The Missing Person. New York, Schocken, 2011.

Kamal, Sheena. The Lost Ones. New York: William Morrow, 2018.

Kawakami, Hiromi. Manazuru. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2017.

Khoury, Elias. White Masks. New York: Archipelago, 2010.

Kim, Angie. Happiness Falls. New York: Hogarth Press, 2023.

Knight, Carol Lynne. If I Go Missing. Newbergh, OR: Fernwood Press, 2022.

Ko, Lisa. The Leavers. New York: Algonquin Books, 2018.

Krabbé, Tim. The Vanishing. New York: Random House, 1993.

Kwok, Jean. Searching for Sylvie Lee. New York: William Morrow, 2020.

Lacey, Catherine. Nobody is Ever Missing. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2014.

Larsson, Stieg. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. New York: Vintage Crime, 2009.

Lee, Chang-Rae. Aloft. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005.

Lewis, Janet. The Wife of Martin Guerre. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013.

Liu, Aimee. Flash House. New York: Warner Books, 2004.

Lindsay, Joan. Picnic at Hanging Rock. New York: Penguin, 2017.

Lippman, Laura. After I’m Gone. New York: Harper, 2014.

Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The End of Her Honeymoon. New York: Scribner’s, 1913.

Luiselli, Valeria. Lost Children Archive. New York: Vintage, 2020.

Mankowski, Guy. How I Left the National Grid: A Post-Punk Novel. Alresford, UK: Roundfire Books, 2015.

Mannion, Una. Tell Me What I Am. New York: Harper, 2023.

Marlowe, Derek. Echoes of Celandine. New York: Viking, 1970.

Martínez, Tomás Eloy. Santa Evita. New York: Vintage, 1997.

Matar, Hisham. Anatomy of a Disappearance. New York: Dial Press, 2012.

—. In the Country of Men. New York: Random House, 2008.

Matsumoto, Seicho. Point Zero. London: Bitter Lemon Press, 2024.

Maxwell, Abi. The Den. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. New York: Vintage, 1992.

McEwen, Ian. The Child in Time. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1999.

Mendelsohn, Jane. I Was Amelia Earhart. New York: Vintage, 1997.

Michaels, Lisa. Grand Ambition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.

Mitchard, Jacquelyn. The Deep End of the Ocean. New York: Penguin, 1999.

Modiano, Patrick. Missing Person. Davine R. Godine, 2005.

—. Dora Bruder. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.

—. In the Café of Lost Youth. New York: New York Review of Books, 2016.

Mooney, Robert. Father of the Man. New York: Pantheon, 2001.

Morris, Mary McGarry. Vanished. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

Morselli, Guido. Dissipatio H.G.: The Vanishing. New York: New York Review of Books, 2020.

Mueleman, Sarah. Find Me Gone. New York: Harper, 2018.

Murakami, Haruki. South of the Border, West of the Sun. New York: Vintage, 2000.

—. Sputnik Sweetheart. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2002.

—. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. New York: Vintage, 1998.

Ndiaye, Marie. That Time of Year. San Francisco: Two Lines Press, 2023.

Ng, Celeste. Everything I Never Told You. New York: Penguin, 2015.

—. Little Fires Everywhere. New York: Penguin, 2019.

—. Our Missing Hearts. New York: Penguin, 2022.

Novey, Idra. Ways to Disappear. New York: Little, Brown, 2017.

Nutting, Alissa. Made for Love. New York: Ecco Press,  2018.

Oates, Joyce Carol. Carthage. New York: Ecco Press, 2014.

—. 48 Clues Into the Disappearance of My Sister. Mysterious Press, 2024.

O’Brien, Tim. In the Lake of the Woods. Boston: Mariner Bay Books, 2006.

Ogawa, Yoko. The Memory Police. New York: Pantheon Books, 2019.

Oliver, Lauren. Vanishing Girls. New York: HarperCollins, 2016.

O’Nan, Stewart. Songs for the Missing. New York: Penguin, 2009.

Ondaatje, Michael. In the Skin of a Lion. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1997.

—. Anil’s Ghost. New York: Vintage, 2001.

Pamuk, Orhan. The Black Book. New York: Vintage, 2006.

Park, David. The Truth Commissioner. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009.

Partnoy, Alicia. The Little School. Jersey City, NJ: Cleis Press, 1998.

Perec, Georges. A Void. Boston: Verba Mundi, 2005.

Picoult, Jodi. Leaving Time. New York: Ballantine, 2015.

Piper, Evelyn. Bunny Lake is Missing. New York: Feminist Press, 2004.

Pirandello, Luigi. The Late Mattia Pascal. New York: New York Review of Books, 2004.

Phillips, Julia. Disappearing Earth. New York: Vintage, 2020.

Porter, Andrew. In Between Days. New York: Vintage, 2013.

Pritchett, V.S. Dead Man Leading. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Rao, Shobha. Girls Burn Brighter. New York: Flatiron Books, 2019.

Rising, Lawrence. She Who Was Helena Cass. New York: George H. Doran, 1920.

Rose, Heather. The Butterfly Man. St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 2005.

Ryan, Erin Kate. Quantum Girl Theory. New York: Random House, 2023.

Semple, Maria. Where’d You Go, Bernadette. New York: Back Bay Books, 2013.

Simenon, Georges. Monsieur Monde Vanishes. New York: New York Review of Books, 2004.

Simpson, Mona. The Lost Father. New York: Vintage, 1993.

Spark, Muriel. Aiding and Abetting. New York: Penguin, 2000.

Thornton, Lawrence. Imagining Argentina. New York: Bantam, 1991.

—. Naming the Sprits. New York: Bantam, 1996.

Traba, Marta. Mothers and Shadows. Columbia, LA: Readers International, 2017.

Tyler, Anne. Searching for Caleb. New York: Vintage, 1996.

—. Ladder of Years. New York: Vintage, 1996.

Valenzuela, Luisa. He Who Searches. Dallas: Dalkey Archive, 1987.

—. The Censors: A Bilingual Selection of Stories. Evanston, IL: Curbstone Press, 1995.

Viel, Tanguy. The Disappearance of Jim Sullivan. Dallas: Dalkey Archive, 2021.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Penguin, 2019.

Watson, Randall. No Evil is Wide. Lake Dallas, TX: Madville Press, 2023.

White, Ethel Lina. The Lady Vanishes. Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Classics, 2015.

Wieland, Liza. A Watch of Nightingales. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.

Wylie, Philip. The Disappearance. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2004.

Yocum, Katy. Three Ways to Disappear. Ashland, OR: Ashland Creek Press, 2019.

Zola, Émile. Buried Alive. New York: Warren Press, 1911.

Memoirs

Bonner, Betsy. The Book of Atlantis Black: The Search for a Sister Gone Missing. New York: Tin House Books, 2020.

Brierley, Saroo. A Long Way Home. New York: Berkeley Books, 2015.

Carlisle, Kelly Grey. We Are All Shipwrecks. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2018.

Conover, Sarah. Set Adrift: A Mystery and a Memoir – My Family’s Disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle. Gig Harbor, WA: 55 Fathoms, 2023.

Cumming, Laura. Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Child. New York: Scribner’s, 2019.

Flook, Maria. My Sister Life. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.

Gwartney, Debra. Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love. Boston: Mariner Books, 2010.

Harrison, Lindsay. Missing: A Memoir. New York: Scribner’s, 2014.

Kushner, David. Alligator Candy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Lunday, Robert. Disequilibria: Meditations on Missingness. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2023.

Matar, Hisham. The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between. New York: Random House, 2017.

—. A Month in Siena. New York: Random House, 2019.

O’Hagan, Andrew. The Missing. London: Picador, 1995.

Renner, James. True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray. New York: Picador, 2017.

Rotondi, Jessica Pearce. What We Inherit: A Secret War and a Family’s Search for Answers. Los Angeles: Unnamed Press, 2020.

Theory and Criticism

Abe, Kobo. The Frontier Within: Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

Agamben, Giorgio. What is Real? Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018.

Baudrillard, Jean. The Ecstasy of Communication. New York: Semiotext(e), 1988.

—. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

—. The Perfect Crime. New York: Verso, 2008.

—. Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? Chicago: Seagull Books, 2009.

—. America. New York: Verso, 2010.

Bishop, Karen Elizabeth. The Space of Disappearance: A Narrative Commons in the Ruins of Argentine State Terror. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021.

Edkins, Jenny. Ithaca: Missing: Persons and Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016.

Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Heller-Roazen, Daniel. Absentees: On Variously Missing Persons. New York: Zone Books, 2021.

Pitt, Kristin E. Body, Nation, and Narrative in the Americas. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Rabaté, Dominique. Désirs de disparaître: Une traversée du roman français contemporain. Rimouski, Québec: Tangence éditeur, 2015.

Taylor, Diana. Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s Dirty War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.

Virilio, Paul. The Aesthetics of Disappearance. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009.

Other Nonfiction

Agosin, Marjorie. Women of Smoke. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1989.

Allen, Michael J. Until the Last Man Comes Home: POWs, MIAs, and the Unending Vietnam War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Ayers, Captain John H. Missing Men: The Story Of The Missing Persons Bureau Of The New York Police Department. New York: Garden City Publishing, 1932.

Baldwin, James. The Evidence of Things Not Seen. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985.

Begg, Paul. Into Thin Air: People Who Disappear. London: David & Charles, 1979.

Biaggio, Maryka. The Point of Vanishing: Based on the True Story of Author Barbara Follett and Her Mysterious Disappearance. Mechanicsburg, PA: Sunbury Press, 2021.

Billman, Jon. The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wilderness. New York: Grand Central, 2021.

Boss, Pauline. Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Bowden, Mark. The Last Stone: Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020.

Boynton, Robert S. Invitation-Only Zone. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2017.

Brown, Ethan. Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8? New York: Scribner’s, 2018.

Busch, Akiko. How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency. New York: Penguin, 2020.

Carlson, Eric Stener. I Remember Julia: Voices of the Disappeared. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.

Coleman, Jonathan. Exit the Rainmaker. New York: Dell, 1989.

Congram, Derek. Missing Persons: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Disappeared. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2016.

Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Denton, Sally. The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs & Murder. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

Dimock, Brad. Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde. Flagstaff, AZ: Fretwater Press, 2001.

Dumas, Alexandre (Père). The Crimes of the Marquise de Brinvilliers [“Martin Guerre”] London: Methuen, 1908.

Dyer, Geoff. The Missing of the Somme. New York: Vintage, 2011.

El-Hai, Jack. The Lost Brothers: A Family’s Decades-Long Search. Ann Arbor: University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Ellison, Mary. Missing from Home. London: Pan Books, 1964.

Fischer, Paul. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022.

Fleming, Peter. Brazilian Adventure. London: Alden Press, 1933.

Fradkin, Philip L. Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Franklin, H. Bruce. M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America: How and Why Belief in Live POWs Has Possessed a Nation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993.

Gibler, John. I Couldn’t Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us: An Oral History of the Attacks Against the Students of Ayotzinapa. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2017.

Grann, David. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon. New York: Vintage, 2010.

Greene, Karen Shalev and Lilian Alys. Missing Persons: A Handbook of Research. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Halber, Deborah. The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths are Solving America’s Coldest Cases. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Hepburn, Stephanie and Rita James Simon. Human Trafficking Around the World: Hidden in Plain Sight. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

Howe, Nicholas. Not Without Peril. Boston: Appalachian Mountain Club, 2009.

Ling, Justin. Missing from the Village: The Story of Serial Killer Bruce McArthur, the Search for Justice, and the System That Failed Toronto’s Queer Community. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2022.

Magueijo, João. A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Disappearance of Ettore Majorana, the Troubled Genius of the Nuclear Age. Boston: Basic Books, 2009.

Marnham, Patrick: Trail of Havoc: In the Steps of Lord Lucan. London: Penguin, 1987.

Mauger, Léna and Stéphane Remael. The Vanished: The “Evaporated People” of Japan in Stories and Photographs. New York: Skyhorse, 2014.

McDiarmid, Jessica. Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. New York: Atria Books, 2019.

McGrath, Ben. Riverman: An American Odyssey. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2023.

Morewitz, Stephen J. and Caroline Sturdy Colls. Handbook of Missing Persons. Berlin: Springer, 2018.

Murdoch, Sierra Crane. Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country. New York: Random House, 2021.

Nash, Robert Jay. Among the Missing. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.

Nickerson, Shelia. Disappearance: A Map. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996.

Nolan, Rachel. Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2024.

Phillips, S. M. Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence. Boston: Estes & Lauriat, 1873.

Pratt, Bramwell. God’s Private Eye: The Fascinating Work of The Salvation Army Investigation Department. St. Albans, UK: Campfield Press, 1988.

Preitler, Barbara. Grief and Disappearance: Psychosocial Interventions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015.

Rawlence, Christopher. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022.

Recko, Corey. Murder on the White Sands: The Disappearance of Albert and Henry Fountain. Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2007.

Reidel, James. Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2007.

Rich, Doris L. Amelia Earhart: A Biography. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 1996.

Richmond, Doug. How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found. Palms Springs, CA: Desert Publications, 1996.

Roberts, David. Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer. New York: Crown, 2012.

Roberts, Sara Hawys and Leon Noakes. Withdrawn Traces: Searching for the Truth About Richey Manic. London: Virgin Books, 2019.

Ruddick, James. Lord Lucan: The Truth About the Century’s Most Celebrated Murder Mystery. London: Headline, 1994.

Salgado, Minoli. Twelve Cries from Home: In Search of Sri Lanka’s Disappeared. London: Repeater, 2022.

Sarasin, J. G. The Mystery of Martin Guerre. London: Hutchinson, 1934.

Saroyan, Aram. Genesis Angels: The Saga of Lew Welch & the Beat Generation. New York: William Morrow, 1979.

Sciascia, Leonardo. The Moro Affair: And the Mystery of Majorana. New York: New York Review of Books, 2004.

Sinclair, Iain, Ed. London: City of Disappearances. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2006.

Stegner, Wallace. Mormon Country [Everett Ruess]. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2003.

Stewart, Erin. The Missing Among Us: Stories of Missing Persons and Those Left Behind.  Sydney, Australia: NewSouth Books, 2021.

Smith, Laura. The Art of Vanishing. New York: Viking, 2018.

Thernstrom, Melanie. The Dead Girl. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2014.

Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson [on Oscar Acosta]. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012.

Tofel, Richard J. Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater, and the New York He Left Behind. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004.

Tomalin, Nicholas and Ron Hall. The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. New York: Stein and Day, 1985.

Villiers, Alan. Posted Missing: The Story of Ships Lost Without Trace in Recent Years. New York: Scribner’s, 1974.

Warren, William. Jim Thompson: the Unsolved Mystery. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2014.

Williams, Richard. Missing: The Inside Story of the Salvation Army’s Missing Persons Department. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1969.

Willis, Graham Denyer. Keep the Bones Alive: Missing People and the Search for Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022.

Poetry

(This section is focused on contemporary collections in which disappearance is a recurrent theme.)

Agosin, Marjorie. An Absence of Shadows. Freedonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1998.

Baker, Aimée. Doe. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2018.

Emanuel, Lynn. Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023.

Finkel, Donald. The Wake of the Electron. New York: Atheneum, 1987.

Franklin, Jennifer. If Some God Shakes Your House. New York: Four Way Books, 2023.

González, Rigoberto. Black Blossoms. New York: Four Way Books, 2011.

—. Unpeopled Eden. New York: Four Way Books, 2013.

—. The Book of Ruin. New York: Four Way Books, 2019.

—. To the Boy Who Was Night: Poems: Selected and New. New York: Four Way Books, 2023.

Goodfellow, Jessica. Whiteout. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 2017.

L’Esperance, Mari. The Darkened Temple. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2008.

Lindenberg, Rebecca. Love, An Index. San Fransisco: McSweeney’s, 2012.

Malone, Erin. Site of Disappearance. Chevy Chase, MD: Ornithopter Press, 2023.

Perlongher, Nestor. Cadavers. Phoenix, AZ:  Cardboard House Press, 2018.

Quintanilla, Octavio. If I Go Missing. Auston, TX: Slough Press, 2014.

Scofield, Greg. Witness, I Am. Gibsons, BC, Canada: Nightwood Editions, 2016.

Shearin, Faith. Telling the Bees: Poems. Nacogdoches, TX: Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2015.

Uriba, Sara. Antígona González. Los Angeles: Les Figues Press, 2016.

Zurita, Raúl. Purgatory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

—. Song for His Disappeared Love. Notre Dame, IN: Action Books, 2010.

[11/20/2023]