A family’s worst nightmare is realized in Stewart O’Nan’s new novel, Songs For The Missing (Viking, $25.95), when their high-school daughter, Kim, fails to come home on a typical summer weeknight. Her parents’ natural reactions move from anger to worry to terror, as they search in vain for a sign of her.  As time goes by and Kim fails to turn up, Ed and Fran struggle to learn their new roles as parents of a missing child.  Kim’s disappearance affects everyone in different ways.  Her younger sister Lindsay, an unpopular but straight-A student, feels the loss, but after a lifetime living in Kim’s shadow, is also uncomfortably liberated.  Kim’s best friend and boyfriend struggle with guilt and whether to reveal damaging facts about Kim’s life even if it might help the police find her. O’Nan is expert in portraying ordinary life in all its complexity, tedium, hilarity, generosity, and terror as a family deals with a domestic nightmare.