Local Woman Missing: A Psychological Thriller Paperback – Large Print, January 28, 2026

In this gripping psychological thriller from debut author Erika Berlanga, a missing woman's accusations of conspiracy become terrifyingly real for the investigator who refuses to let her case go cold...Iris Holt had everything to lose when she started asking questions. A brilliant pharmaceutical researcher at Verdant BioSolutions, she noticed something disturbing in the clinical trial data: participants weren't just recovering from depression, they were becoming unnaturally compliant. When she tried to report it, everything changed. Her husband claimed she was paranoid. Her colleagues said she was having a breakdown. The police found no evidence to support her claims.Then Iris disappeared.Six months later, investigative podcaster Morgan Pike arrives in Millbrook, Michigan to find out what really happened. Morgan knows the pattern all too well: inconvenient woman makes accusations, gets labeled crazy, vanishes from the story. She expects a cold case and a grieving family looking for closure.Instead, she finds a town where everyone is too helpful, too consistent, too calm. Where Verdant BioSolutions employs half the residents and provides them with Serenex, a revolutionary depression medication. Where those on the medication seem fundamentally different-compliant, agreeable, unable to question authority.As Morgan digs into Iris's claims, she begins experiencing the same things Iris reported before she vanished. Memory gaps. Evidence that moves or disappears. Her motel room searched. The police chief suggesting she needs psychiatric evaluation. An entire town gaslighting her into doubting her own sanity.Morgan is two years sober and fighting to stay credible. She can't afford to be the podcaster who lost her mind chasing conspiracy theories. But when she discovers Iris's hidden storage unit containing months of evidence-proof of illegal human experimentation, behavioral modification, and pharmaceutical crimes-everything Iris claimed becomes horrifyingly real.Iris wasn't paranoid. She was the only person in Millbrook seeing clearly.And now Morgan must find her before she becomes the next woman the town makes disappear. Because in Millbrook, the penalty for uncovering the truth is simple: you vanish, and everyone agrees you were always unstable.Local Woman Missing is a heart-pounding psychological thriller about medical gaslighting, pharmaceutical corruption, and two women fighting to be believed when an entire community conspires to silence them. Read more