Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction Best Book (nominee)
Betty Trask Award Best First Novel (nominee)
Desmond Elliott Prize Best Book (nominee)
Costa Book Awards Best First Novel
HOW DO YOU SOLVE A MYSTERY WHEN YOU CAN'T REMEMBER THE CLUES?
In this darkly riveting debut novel—a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also an heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging—an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences.
Maud, an aging grandmother, is slowly losing her memory—and her grip on everyday life. Yet she refuses to forget her best friend Elizabeth, whom she is convinced is missing and in terrible danger.
But no one will listen to Maud—not her frustrated daughter, Helen, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth’s mercurial son, Peter. Armed with handwritten notes she leaves for herself and an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth and save her beloved friend.
This singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud’s rapidly dissolving present. But the clues she discovers seem only to lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II.
As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey’s disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth?
Genre: Mystery
In this darkly riveting debut novel—a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also an heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging—an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences.
Maud, an aging grandmother, is slowly losing her memory—and her grip on everyday life. Yet she refuses to forget her best friend Elizabeth, whom she is convinced is missing and in terrible danger.
But no one will listen to Maud—not her frustrated daughter, Helen, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth’s mercurial son, Peter. Armed with handwritten notes she leaves for herself and an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth and save her beloved friend.
This singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud’s rapidly dissolving present. But the clues she discovers seem only to lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II.
As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey’s disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth?
Genre: Mystery
Praise for this book
"Elizabeth Is Missing will stir and shake you: an investigation into a seventy-year-old crime, through the eyes of the most likeably unreliable of narrators. But the real mystery at its compassionate core is the fragmentation of the human mind." - Emma Donoghue
"A thrillingly assured, haunting and unsettling novel, I read it at a gulp." - Deborah Moggach
"A thrillingly assured, haunting and unsettling novel, I read it at a gulp." - Deborah Moggach
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Used availability for Emma Healey's Elizabeth Is Missing
Hardback Editions
November 2014 : UK Hardback
October 2014 : USA Hardback
January 2014 : UK Hardback
June 2014 : USA Hardback
June 2014 : USA Hardback
Paperback Editions
November 2015 : UK Paperback
June 2015 : USA Paperback
June 2015 : USA Paperback
December 2014 : UK Paperback
May 2014 : UK Paperback
Audio Editions
July 2014 : UK Audio CD
June 2014 : USA Audio CD
June 2014 : USA Audio CD
June 2014 : USA Audio edition
June 2014 : USA Audio edition
June 2014 : Australia Audio edition
June 2014 : Canada Audio edition
June 2014 : UK Audio edition
Kindle Editions
June 2014 : Canada Kindle edition
June 2014 : USA Kindle edition
June 2014 : Australia, UK Kindle edition