Mysterious Disappearances
March 15, 2024
There’s something uniquely disturbing about people vanishing into thin air…. March marks the anniversary of the disappearance and murder of Charles Lindberg’s infant son. The kidnapping caused a national sensation. But, it wasn’t the first, nor the last to capture our minds and make us wonder what really happened. This month, read about a mysterious disappearance, real or fictional.
Cemetery John: The Undiscovered Mastermind of the Lindbergh Kidnapping by Robert Zorn
In this meticulous and authoritative account of the crime, the trial, and the times of the Lindbergh kidnapping, Robert Zorn clears away decades of ungrounded speculation surrounding the Lindbergh kidnapping case. Evidence, opinion, and logic have discredited the notion that Bruno Richard Hauptmann –electrocuted in 1936 –acted alone. Using personal possessions and documents, never-before seen photographs, new forensic evidence, and extensive research, Zorn has written a shocking and captivating account of the crime and the original “Trial of the Century.”
Highway of Tears: a True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid
For decades, Indigenous women have gone missing, or been found murdered, along an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia. The highway is known as the ‘Highway of Tears’, and it has come to symbolize a national crisis. Journalist, Jessica McDiarmid, investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a climate where Indigenous women are over-policed, yet under-protected.
The Last Place You’d Look: True Stories of Missing Persons and the People Who Search for Them by Carole Moore
According to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), there are about 100,000 active, open and unresolved missing persons cases that sit on the books in the U.S. each day. The numbers are similar in Canada, where annually more than 60,000 children are reported missing. Additionally, in the U.S. alone there are more than 40,000 John and Jane Does in cemeteries and morgues across the country, still waiting to be identified. The anguish of having a loved one vanish is unthinkable, yet thousands of families face this heartbreak every day. The Last Place You’d Look provides searchers a starting point and gives readers an overview of “the club no one wants to belong to.”
The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir
Despite five centuries of investigation by historians, the sinister deaths of the boy king Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, remain two of the most fascinating murder mysteries in English history. Did Richard III really kill “the Princes in the Tower,” as is commonly believed, or was the murderer someone else entirely? Carefully examining every shred of contemporary evidence as well as dozens of modern accounts, Alison Weir reconstructs the entire chain of events leading to the double murder. We are witnesses to the rivalry, ambition, intrigue, and struggle for power that culminated in the imprisonment of the princes and the hushed-up murders that secured Richard’s claim to the throne as Richard III.
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up – to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? – he’s not there. The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Where is Jess’s brother?
The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke by Andrew Lawler
In 1587, 115 men, women, and children arrived on Roanoke, an island off the coast of North Carolina. But by the time the colony’s leader, John White, returned to Roanoke from a resupply mission in England, his settlers were nowhere to be found. They had vanished into the wilderness, leaving behind only a single clue–the word “Croatoan” carved into a tree. The disappearance of the Lost Colony became an enduring American mystery. For four centuries, it has gone unsolved, obsessing countless historians, archeologists, and amateur sleuths. Today, after centuries of searching in vain, new clues have begun to surface. In The Secret Token, Andrew Lawler offers a beguiling history of the Lost Colony, and of the relentless quest to bring its fate to light.
Vanished! America’s Most Mysterious Kidnappings, Castaways, and the Forever Lost by Sarah Pruitt
Vanished! is an illustrated tour of history’s most confounding cases of disappearance from Amelia Earhart to Jimmy Hoffa; DB Cooper; Alcatraz escapists Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Algin; Jim Thompson; Judge Joseph Force Crater; and more. Starting with the first 30 days surrounding each incident, and then looking at efforts up to this very day to solve each case, this book covers in photos and text history’s most perplexing vanishings.
The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda
New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda returns with a gripping and propulsive thriller that opens with the disappearance of a journalist who is investigating a string of vanishings in the resort town of Cutter’s Pass—will its dark secrets finally be revealed? Ten years ago, Abigail Lovett fell into a job she loves, managing The Passage Inn, a cozy, upscale resort nestled in the North Carolina mountain town of Cutter’s Pass. The string of unsolved disappearances that has haunted the town is once again thrust into the spotlight when journalist Landon West, who was staying at the inn to investigate the story of the vanishing trail, then disappears himself.
When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain
Anna Hart is a missing persons detective in San Francisco. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna’s childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever. Can solving them help her heal?