Lost Highway Books in Order

The Lost Highway thrillers are Alexandra Sokoloff’s collaboration with Scottish crime writer Craig Robertson. The series starts with The Grapevine, a California-set missing-person mystery built around a mother who refuses to accept that her daughter is gone for good.

Lou Gomersall’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Abby, vanished during a road trip. A year has passed, and the police do not believe Lou’s theory that Abby’s disappearance is connected to other missing young women. When another college student disappears, Lou sees a new chance to follow the trail herself.

So she takes the family RV onto the road.

Lou drives across California, through deserts, mountain routes, coastal roads, forests, and the many odd corners of modern roadside life. Her search brings her into contact with van-lifers, RV travelers, truck-stop workers, people living on the margins, and strangers who may know more than they first admit. The road trip is not just scenery. It is the method of investigation, and it keeps placing Lou in unfamiliar territory where she has to decide whom to trust.

The title points to the real Grapevine route in California, but the series uses highways more broadly as a setting for movement, escape, and reinvention. People can disappear on the road. They can also leave clues behind, if someone knows where to look. Lou is not a conventional detective, which gives the story a different kind of tension. She is a parent with limited official power and a lot to lose.

Her determination is the engine of the book.

The tone is contemporary, tense, and grounded in the practical problems of a long search. Lou has to manage fear, grief, uncertainty, and the logistics of chasing leads across a huge state. The investigation is personal from the first page, but it opens out into questions about missing people, the assumptions authorities make, and who gets believed when they insist that something is wrong.

Because The Grapevine launches the series, it is the right place to begin. It introduces Lou, Abby’s disappearance, and the world of California roads that shapes the ongoing story. Readers who enjoy missing-person investigations, determined amateur investigators, and suspense that keeps moving from one location to the next should find this a strong entry point.