Missing Sam
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 27 Jan 2026
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
A tense and twisty story of a woman who goes missing on a morning run and her wife's determination to both find her and clear her own name—from the bestselling author of Honor.
One night after a party, old grievances surface between married couple Aliya and Sam and the night ends badly with a heated argument. Sam goes for a run early the next morning to clear her head—and doesn’t come back.
Aliya reports her wife missing, but as a gay, Muslim daughter of immigrants, she can't escape the scrutiny and suspicion of those around her. Scared and furious and feeling isolated as strangers and acquaintances alike doubt her innocence, Aliya makes one wrong choice after another. She must fight to prove her innocence in the public eye even as she is torn between her fear that Sam is dead and her desire to find and save her wife. But is safety ever truly possible for them?
A provocative examination of suburban mores, Missing Sam captures the terror manifested in today’s political climate, and the real dangers, both physical and psychological, of being brown and queer in America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An ill-timed fall during a morning run shatters the lives of English professor Sam O'Malley and her wife, Ali Mirza, in this engrossing thriller from bestseller Umrigar (The Museum of Failures) that doubles as a moving meditation on otherness. Sam and Ali have always felt comfortable in their leafy, upscale suburb—the so-called "People's Republic of Cleveland Heights"—but when Sam heads out for an early-morning run and never returns, it becomes painfully clear to Ali just how thin her neighbors' veneer of tolerance is. Blood traces along Sam's running route lead detectives to conclude that she was abducted after falling to the ground, but Sam's narcissistic graduate student Candace Brickman fans speculation that Ali—a Muslim and second-generation Indian American—might be responsible for Sam's disappearance. As days turn into weeks, clients of Ali's interior design business cancel projects, racist trolls attack her online, and someone puts a bag of human feces on the couple's doorstep. Though the hunt for Sam propels the narrative, Umrigar never loses sight of the bigger picture, including the conflicting pulls of family, faith, sexuality, and culture that shape her characters. This vivid and deeply felt narrative should please the author's fans and win her new ones.
