Alice Rorden’s “Missing: The Search” Opens a Door to Mystery, Magic, and an Unforgettable Journey

What would you do if the person you loved walked upstairs and simply never came back? That chilling question launches Alice Rorden’s “Missing: The Search,” an imaginative mystery-fantasy novel that begins inside a newly purchased Victorian home and quickly expands into an adventure far beyond the familiar.

Jayne Rosenberg and her husband, Darwin, expect their move into the old Smithfield house to be the start of a new chapter. Instead, their first night in the house becomes the beginning of a mystery. Darwin goes upstairs, a sound is heard, and then there is silence. Jayne searches the bedroom, the halls, the attic, the veranda, the yard, and every place he could possibly have gone. His vehicles are still outside. There is no obvious exit. Darwin is simply gone.

The mystery deepens when Inspector Peter Riggs reveals that Darwin is not the first person to disappear from the Smithfield house. Over the years, children and adults have vanished without leaving behind the kind of clues expected in an ordinary missing-person case. Even more unsettling, most of those disappearances are connected to the same northwest bedroom—the room Darwin entered just before he vanished.

For Jayne, waiting is not an option. She is an investigative reporter, accustomed to asking difficult questions and following details other people might overlook. Her determination brings her together with Tom, whose own family has been touched by the house’s strange history. While examining the mysterious room, an accident changes everything. In an instant, Jayne and Tom are no longer in the Victorian house. They find themselves on a grassy hill beneath a bright sky in an unfamiliar world—and before they have time to understand what happened, a bull makes it clear that survival may be their first challenge.

A Search That Becomes Something Much Bigger

Jayne’s mission remains clear: find Darwin. But the world she has entered operates by different rules. She and Tom must learn a new language, adapt to unfamiliar customs, travel without modern conveniences, and follow a trail left by people who disappeared from the Smithfield house before them. Some of those missing people are no longer simply names from old police files. They have survived, built relationships, learned trades, and created lives in this strange place.

The journey introduces Jayne and Tom to an extraordinary cast that includes kings, wizards, elves, shape changers, unusual communities, and Orsemus, a wolf-like Koopra who communicates through telepathy. The travelers also begin to discover surprising talents of their own. Jayne can create an invisible defensive shield. Darwin develops the ability to disappear from sight. Tom can shape-change, while Liz can influence the weather. These abilities are not presented as effortless superpowers; they become part of the characters’ learning, survival, and sometimes even the humor of the adventure.

As the search continues, “Missing: The Search” keeps asking the same irresistible question in different ways: Where is Darwin, what really happened in that bedroom, and why have so many people been pulled into the same impossible mystery?

Why This Book Matters

Beneath the magic, danger, and mystery, Alice Rorden’s novel explores something deeply human: what happens when life changes without permission. Jayne and the others are separated from everything familiar. They cannot rely on technology, comfortable routines, or the certainty that the world will work the way it always has.

They must learn, adapt, trust strangers, build new relationships, and discover strengths they did not know they possessed.

That gives the story an emotional dimension beyond its fantasy setting. The characters are not only searching for a way through another world; they are also discovering what they value most. Home gradually becomes more than a house, a town, or even the world where they were born. It becomes connected to family, friendship, purpose, love, and the people with whom they choose to build a life.

The novel also rewards readers who enjoy mysteries that slowly reveal their patterns. The disappearances begin to show common details: the same room, unexpected accidents, the full moon, and words spoken at just the wrong—or perhaps exactly the right—moment. As the characters come closer to understanding how the gateway opened, another question becomes just as important as how to return.

If they finally discover the way back, will everyone choose to leave the lives they have created behind? That question gives “Missing: The Search” a compelling emotional hook. Finding the way home may not be the same as deciding where home should be.

A Story for Readers Who Want More Than One Genre

“Missing: The Search” moves comfortably between mystery, fantasy, adventure, humor, romance, and family drama. It begins with a disappearance that could belong in a detective story, then opens into a world of magical abilities and extraordinary people without losing sight of Jayne’s deeply personal reason for continuing forward.

Readers who enjoy mysterious houses, alternate worlds, journeys of discovery, magical characters, strong family bonds, and stories about ordinary people forced into extraordinary circumstances will find plenty to explore in Rorden’s novel.

About the Author

Alice Rorden was born in Modesto, California, shortly before World War II to Elizabeth and Addler Whaley. She is a graduate of Modesto Junior College. She met her sailor husband, Carl, at a church function, and they were married at their church near San Diego, California. Their family includes six children. Alice and Carl are active in genealogy and their church and enjoy spending time with their grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Available Now

Alice Rorden invites readers to step through the mystery of the Smithfield house and discover what waits on the other side. For anyone ready for a story where a missing husband becomes the beginning of a much larger adventure, “Missing: The Search” offers mystery, magic, danger, humor, heart, and one final question that may stay with readers long after the last page:

If you found another world—and another life—what would it take to make you call it home?

Purchase “Missing: The Search” by Alice Rorden on Amazon:

Amazon - “Missing: The Search”

One house. One disappearance. Another world. How far would you go to find the person you love?

Contact Information

April Andrews

FulFillment Officer

The Ewings Publishing

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