From the remote Siberian taiga to the harsh American frontier, from rural Long Island to postwar Belgium, Masih's characters are diverse in identity and circumstance, defying the burden of erasure by disappearing into or emerging from physical and emotional landscapes. In How We Disappear, award-winning author Tara Lynn Masih offers readers transporting and compelling stories of those taken, those missing, and those neither here nor gone-runaways, exiles, wanderers, ghosts, even the elusive Dame Agatha Christie. A most engaging read.Join Midtown Reader and Tara Lynn Masih as we discuss her newest story collection, How We Disappear selected by THE MILLIONS as a Most Anticipated September book. In this book, the author weaves one compelling narrative after another until the reader is enthralled by the endless list of historical and contemporary stories about lives that were never really lost. Every life is full of emotional upheavals, and a landscape of identity and circumstances. Then there’s the case of Agatha Christie and her mysterious disappearance, a woman who hid behind her music and her writing, a woman whose mystery novels conjured up as much intrigue as her life itself.

Runaways, exiles, wanderers, and even ghosts. The stories cover a wide range of possibilities, from missing people to criminals trying to hide their crimes, as well as people abducted and presumed lost for good. Each tale has its plot, its mystery, and its intriguing subterfuge. Some of the stories are told as first-person narratives, while others are related in the third person. Tara Lynn Masih’s How We Disappear ventures into the intriguing art of hiding in plain sight. There’s always someone who’ll recognize the ghost, the person trying to blend into the woodwork, so to speak, to hide in plain sight. Some people might think they can blend into oblivion, but, in reality, no one goes missing forever. That is a useful tool to help law enforcers find missing people or criminals. Others are quite the opposite – they can’t forget a face.

How We Disappear: Novella and Stories by Tara Lynn Masih tells readers of “All these faces with stories, good and bad.” Have you ever heard of face blindness? It’s called prosopagnosia.

Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite

How We Disappear by Tara Lynn Masih