Laura Lippman - What the Dead Know
Thirty years earlier two sisters disappear from a shopping mall. Their whereabouts are never discovered and family and friends torture themselves with how two teenagers can just suddenly disappear without a trace. One day a woman, confused from a traffic accident, claims to police that she is one of the missing girls but refuses to answer questions as to what she has been doing in the intervening period. A genuine mystery with a strong focus on the impact of the missing on those left behind.
In Bitter Chill
Val McDermid - A Place of Execution
In Scarsdale, a small Peak District village, Alison Carter a thirteen-year-old girl goes missing. Catherine Heathcote, also a child at the time, is now a journalist and persuades one of the original detectives on the case to discuss his involvement. But when a new lead emerges, the former policeman tries to scupper the story. An atmospheric thriller with some shocking twists.
Helen Fitzgerald - The Cry
When their fractious nine-week old baby disappears from the side of the road in Australia, parents Joanna and Alistair's initial support turns into mutual suspicion. Under the scrutiny of a police investigation and world-wide media coverage, Joanna begins to think the unthinkable. A page-turning read that combines a psychological thriller with insightful vignettes on tensions within a modern family.
Johan Theorin - Echoes from the Dead
On the Swedish island of Oland, Jens, a five-year-old boy went missing 20 years earlier while being looked after by his grandparents. The boy's mother, Julia, has never come to terms with the loss, and lives alone, forever, wondering what became of her son. One day, her estranged father calls her to say that he has been sent a boy's sandal in the post. An eerie and haunting read about the impact of a child's loss on a mother.
Susan Hill - The Pure in Heart
A nine-year-old boy is snatched as he waits for a lift to school while a child, miles away in the north of England, is abducted on the way to school. The mother of the missing boy is devastated by his disappearance and can't even bring herself to talk to her other child. A poignant novel of interweaving stories that have loss and grief at their heart.
In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward is out now (Faber & Faber, £12.99)