WHAT DARK SECRETS WAIT TO BE UNCOVERED WHEN YOU CHECK IN TO THE VILLA ROSA??

The scintillating new novel from the author of  The End of Mr Y

‘Clever, emotionally resonant, packed with startling twists and dark turns and very funny indeed, this is fiction roaring on all cylinders.’  Guardian

“Gloriously dark and tangled . . . clever . . . I highly recommend it.”  Observer

‘A dark, twisty, savagely humorous plunge into a cauldron of toxic relationships . . . as well as a mystery loaded with menace, this is a smart, layered, stinging look at power and its abuse.’  The Times

‘Through her bold storytelling, “The Sleepwalkers” becomes a work of peculiar, gonzo genius. ? Thomas takes a glamorous late-capitalist setting, with rosé and catamarans, and shreds, twists and warps it into a story that is surprising, humane and political to its bones.’  New York Times

‘Thomas tells her story with the craft and cunning of an Aegean sorceress. ? [S]he can make metafiction not just smart but fun. Once more she earns her place in a postwar British canon of playfully serious mavericks that runs from Muriel Spark and Brigid Brophy to Nicola Barker and Ali Smith.’  Spectator

‘Like a darker, funnier The White Lotus, The Sleepwalkers is horrifying in the best possible way. I loved every moment of it.’ James Smythe
 
‘The Sleepwalkers is brilliant, savage and hilarious. The voice is so strong and so distinctive from the get-go, so bold and pitilessly funny. There is no whingeing  here, just a fearless takedown which I read through in a single streak of pure delight. This is Scarlett’s best yet, and I don’t say that lightly.’ Bidisha Mamata

‘The Sleepwalkers  is never-endingly surprising and full of keen observations on relationships, politics, and art. Thomas makes real life so fraught with meaning, it feels hauntingly supernatural. A twisty Gothic tale of vertiginous depths and haunting power.’  Sandra Newman, author of Julia

‘This original thriller has plenty of surprises.’ Good Housekeeping

 ‘An attractive summer holiday read’, Independent

One of the  Daily  Telegraph’s  ’20 Best New Crime Thrillers to Read this Summer’, 2024

Still reeling from the chaos of their wedding, Evelyn and Richard arrive on an idyllic Greek island for their honeymoon. It’s the end of the season and out at sea a storm is brewing.

They check in to an exclusive hotel, the Villa Rosa, where the proprietor Isabella -  a strangely intense woman of indeterminate accent  – flirts outrageously with Richard while treating Evelyn with a rudeness bordering on contempt. Isabella tells them the story of ‘the sleepwalkers’: a couple who stayed at the hotel the year before and drowned in a tragic and unexplained accident. It starts to feel like the entire island is obsessed with ‘the sleepwalkers’, but what at first seems like a fun tale to tell before bed quickly evolves into a living nightmare.  

Caught in a web of deception and intrigue, where nothing and nobody are quite what they seem, Evelyn and Richard discover that their island paradise may in fact be hell on earth and that their only means of escape is to confront dark truths about themselves and those they love.  

Exhilarating, suspenseful, and subversively funny, in  The Sleepwalkers  Thomas takes elements of Daphne Du Maurier and Patricia Highsmith and blends them with her own unique sensibility to create an unforgettable thriller of rare intelligence that cements her reputation as the most exciting and original author of her generation.

‘Muriel Spark’s disreputable niece.’  Spectator  

‘She’s a genius.’ Douglas Coupland
 
‘Thomas has the mesmerising power of a great story teller.’ Financial Times
 
‘One of the most startling, unpredictable writers of her generation.’  Scotsman

‘A beautiful fever dream’ KRISTEN ARNETT

‘Highly seductive ? and fun as hell!’ TONY TULATHIMUTTE

‘Brittany Newell is truly one to watch’ EMMA JANE UNSWORTH

‘Incredible ? romantic, dangerous and sexy’ KATIE BUCKLEY

A hottest book of 2025 in Sunday Times Style, Dazed and Stylist

A blazing novel following a young woman on a wild, hallucinogenic quest for love and selfhood in San Francisco’s seedy underground.

Baby is a dancer at a strip club and at the age of 27, she’s feeling lost. It seems that only Dino, her sweet, cross-dressing, drug-dealing ex-boyfriend can keep her afloat. So, when Dino disappears without so much as a kiss goodbye, she plunges headfirst into San Francisco’s shady erotic underground to find him.

Baby searches through dive bars and old haunts, at the club and at the sex dungeon where she has a part-time dominatrix gig. She encounters clients like Simon, a recluse paying her for increasingly bizarre ‘favours’ and a philosophizing suicide fetishist named ‘Nobody’, as well as co-workers like Emeline, the balletic new hire who seems to want to steal Baby’s whole identity, starting with her underwear.

It’s not long before she starts to find cryptic notes hidden in her belongings and realises her search is attracting the wrong kind of attention. With her grip on reality loosening and the clock ticking, will Baby manage to put together the pieces and find the only man she’s ever loved? Or might her past catch up with her first?

Manically smart, brutally funny and deeply sexy, Soft Core is a book about desire, fantasy and true love – like no other.

‘For the generation whose life is an endless stream of dead-end Hinge dates’ Sunday Times Style

‘Funny, sexy and surprising, I loved it’ Pip Finkemeyer, author of Sad Girl Novel

‘A profound look at sex work and lives unusually lived’Dazed

‘Deliciously entertaining, funny, tantalizing’ Demi Moore

Diana Wood has a job she likes and a husband, Oliver, she loves. They’re in married love, which isn’t exactly the same as love love, but it’s fine.

Or is it? Is fine good enough?

With sex and intimacy more like a memory, Diana decides to rediscover the deeply feeling woman she once was, embarking on a journey of art, sensuality – and sexual fantasy.

But does rediscovering her own desires means dissolving the safe life she’s so carefully cultivated? And is it worth it??

Intelligent, entertaining, and contemporary, Dirty Diana explores female desire in a fun and honest way – and also explores how two partners can find their way back to each other through perseverance, connection and sex.

Readers are already loving Dirty Diana?

‘Absolutely loved this book. It focuses on the female desire, ambitions and needs and wants out of their lives. It looks at marriage and relationships from the point of view of a woman which I found to be a refreshing take.’?????

‘I read this book in a day, I couldn’t put it down!’ ?????

‘This is perfect for a holiday read’ ?????

Patricia Highsmith meets  White Lotus  in this compulsive and brilliant gothic thriller

One of the  Daily  Telegraph’s  ’20 Best New Crime Thrillers to Read this Summer’  

‘Clever, emotionally resonant, packed with startling twists and dark turns and very funny indeed, this is fiction roaring on all cylinders.’  Guardian

‘A dark, twisty, savagely humorous plunge into a cauldron of toxic relationships . . . as well as a mystery loaded with menace, this is a smart, layered, stinging look at power and its abuse.’  The Times

‘Through her bold storytelling, “The Sleepwalkers” becomes a work of peculiar, gonzo genius. ? Thomas takes a glamorous late-capitalist setting, with rosé and catamarans, and shreds, twists and warps it into a story that is surprising, humane and political to its bones.’  New York Times

‘Thomas tells her story with the craft and cunning of an Aegean sorceress. ? [S]he can make metafiction not just smart but fun. Once more she earns her place in a postwar British canon of playfully serious mavericks that runs from Muriel Spark and Brigid Brophy to Nicola Barker and Ali Smith.’  Spectator

‘Like a darker, funnier The White Lotus, The Sleepwalkers is horrifying in the best possible way. I loved every moment of it.’ James Smythe
 
‘The Sleepwalkers is brilliant, savage and hilarious. The voice is so strong and so distinctive from the get-go, so bold and pitilessly funny. There is no whingeing  here, just a fearless takedown which I read through in a single streak of pure delight. This is Scarlett’s best yet, and I don’t say that lightly.’ Bidisha Mamata

‘The Sleepwalkers  is never-endingly surprising and full of keen observations on relationships, politics, and art. Thomas makes real life so fraught with meaning, it feels hauntingly supernatural. A twisty Gothic tale of vertiginous depths and haunting power.’  Sandra Newman, author of Julia

‘This original thriller has plenty of surprises.’ Good Housekeeping

 ‘An attractive summer holiday read’, Independent

Still reeling from the chaos of their wedding, Evelyn and Richard arrive on an idyllic Greek island for their honeymoon. It’s the end of the season and out at sea a storm is brewing.

They check in to an exclusive hotel, the Villa Rosa, where the proprietor Isabella -  a strangely intense woman of indeterminate accent  – flirts outrageously with Richard while treating Evelyn with a rudeness bordering on contempt. Isabella tells them the story of ‘the sleepwalkers’: a couple who stayed at the hotel the year before and drowned in a tragic and unexplained accident. It starts to feel like the entire island is obsessed with ‘the sleepwalkers’, but what at first seems like a fun tale to tell before bed quickly evolves into a living nightmare.  

Caught in a web of deception and intrigue, where nothing and nobody are quite what they seem, Evelyn and Richard discover that their island paradise may in fact be hell on earth and that their only means of escape is to confront dark truths about themselves and those they love.  

Exhilarating, suspenseful, and subversively funny, in  The Sleepwalkers  Thomas takes elements on Daphne Du Maurier and Patricia Highsmith and blends them with her own unique sensibility to create an unforgettable thriller of rare intelligence that cements her reputation as the most exciting and original author of her generation.

‘Muriel Spark’s disreputable niece.’  Spectator  

‘She’s a genius.’ Douglas Coupland
 
‘Thomas has the mesmerising power of a great story teller.’ Financial Times
 
‘One of the most startling, unpredictable writers of her generation.’  Scotsman

By day, Frankie lives an ordinary life: doting daughter, supportive sister, adoring aunt and (mostly) capable colleague. The only trouble is that she also feels invisible.

So by night, Frankie creates her alter ego, uploading risqué photos to a small community of online fans. She becomes sexy, confident and, most importantly, anonymous.

That is, until Frankie’s two worlds collide and she finds herself thrust into the limelight, along with her secret.
Overnight, she becomes both a feminist icon and a target; wanted and worthless; powerful and petrified. Suddenly all eyes are on her.

…but is she ready to bare it all?

Limelight is a funny, touching and provocative tale of sisterhood, sexuality and self-esteem. What would you gain – and lose – by being yourself, instead of who everyone wants you to be?

‘A shimmering fever-dream of a novel’ Telegraph

Spring, 1951. Four people meet in a small French town: the baker and his wife; the ambassador and his wife. Two belong to the town, two are outsiders.

Some time later, strange things start happening. Horses drop dead in the fields. Children grow wild and unbiddable. Ghosts are sighted after dark. Someone is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse – but who is the predator and who their prey?

Audacious and mesmerizing, Cursed Bread is a darkly erotic mystery about a town gripped by madness, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

‘A dreamy sapphic romp‘ The Times

‘Gauzy [and] gripping, a quietly rich maturation of Mackintosh’s skill‘ Guardian

The Spectator Book of the Year 2023

You’re not who you say you are. But neither is she.

Olive Anderson has accepted that tonight she’ll be dining alone, without her husband. So when a beautiful stranger appears at Olive’s dinner table, telling the waiter she’s her wife, Olive is immediately unsettled.

But the stranger wants to talk, and isn’t this what Olive wants on this lonely winter night? To vent to a perfect stranger? She’s too ashamed to tell her real friends the truth – six months into the marriage they all warned her against, her life is a living nightmare.

Perhaps Olive should have asked the fake wife who she’s really married to. Perhaps she should have known this chance encounter had something to do with her secretive husband. Because there is a string of missing women connected to Mr Anderson, and by the morning, Olive will be the latest…

The Fake Wife is an unputdownable thriller that will shock and surprise you like the best television boxsets. If you enjoyed Netflix shows like Behind Her Eyes, The Stranger and Obsession you will love The Fake Wife.

Read what everyone is saying about The Fake Wife:

‘OMG this latest book by Sharon Bolton is so good, definitely worth reading‘ Reader Review, ?????

‘You’ll never guess where this book is going‘ SAMANTHA DOWNING

‘I swear the twists and turns you will not see coming!‘ ?????

‘Totally gripping, with characters who draw you in’ JP DELANEY

‘One thing Sharon Bolton knows how to do is write a compulsive page-turner, and The Fake Wife is just that’ Reader Review, ?????

‘A thriller that had me desperate for answers. I loved it!‘ HARRIET TYCE

‘Sharon Bolton has written another cracker! The twists! The tension! The characters!‘ Reader Review, ?????

Can she escape her mother’s fate and find a connection that is more than skin deep?

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 in  The Guardian, i newspaper,  The  New York Times,  Time,  Globe and Mail,  Bustle,  The Millions,  LitHub,  TOR,  Good Housekeeping,  Our Culture Mag, and more!

‘You think, “She’s not going to go there?yes, she is.” Margaret Atwood  

‘The trancelike, rhapsodic language and deepening atmosphere of unreality make for a narrative that oozes with unease.’  The Guardian

‘[D]ark and seductive.’  i  newspaper

‘An edgy fable on the perils of our modern fascination with beauty.’  Vogue  

‘Awad is a genius, preternaturally gifted at creating vicious, hilarious tales about the depravity inside us.’  Vulture

For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror-and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.

Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, ROUGE explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry-as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, ROUGE holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.

‘A brilliant, biting critique of western beauty standards as well as a soaring, phantasmagoric, Angela Carter-esque fairy tale about trauma and the loss of self.  Rouge  is deeply unsettling, funny, obsessive, and unlike anything I’ve read. A truly mesmerizing read.’  Paul Tremblay, author of  The Cabin at the End of the World

‘Rouge  is a fever dream-a brilliant, intense, unforgettable horror story about a beauty cult with a  deeply moving mother-daughter story at its core. Mona  Awad’s  signature and singular imagination and black humor and empathy are on full display here, and her  wild-ride  of a tale is masterfully grounded in the emotional devastation of childhood and grief. I loved every word of this.’  Laura  Zigman, author of  Small World

‘There is nobody else like Mona Awad, daring enough to plunge her hands-rings and all-into the viscera of story  and discover an unsettling beauty within. ROUGE is her most  magnetic work yet, a thrilling dystopian romp that knows that beneath the glossy, aspirational veneer of self-care lurks the same old gothic abyss.’  Alexandra Kleeman, author of  Something New Under the Sun

‘Unsettling, whimsical, and moving,  Rouge  is an authentic, innovative kind of narrative magic that’s both surreal and absolute. A striking novel of  incandescence and heart.’  Iain Reid, author of  I’m Thinking of Ending Things

‘Awad’s latest is a dreamy (or perhaps nightmarish) gothic fairy tale about a mother, a daughter, and their shared obsession with their own beauty. Like all of Awad’s novels, it reels you in, shakes your brain until you’re not sure what you’re seeing, and then floats off cackling on a cloud of smoke. Metaphorically, that is. I’d forgive you for not being sure.’  Lit Hub (Most Anticipated Books of 2023)

‘Mona Awad, I will read everything you ever write. She is a writer of unbelievable talent.’  Tor.com

‘[A] hypnotic tour de force? Awad approaches the increasingly well-trod ground of sinister wellness gurus with aplomb, creating an atmosphere of creeping discomfort and surreality right from the start. This is the stuff of fairy tales-red shoes, ballrooms, mirrors, and thorns but also sincerity, poignancy, and terror.’  Kirkus  (Starred Review)

‘[A] delightfully twisted fairy tale? The author’s acerbic wit radiates in this excoriating story of beauty’s ugly side.’  Publisher’s Weekly