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.
Scarlett Thomas Book order
Scarlett Thomas crafts literary fiction for adults, weaving in elements of literary fantasy for younger audiences. Her work is recognized for its exploration of complex themes and a distinctive style that draws readers into intricate worlds. Thomas approaches writing as a means to delve into the human experience, offering captivating and thought-provoking narratives.







- 2024
- 2024
Tense, atmospheric and darkly funny, The Sleepwalkers is a a sublimely creepy contemporary gothic work about a relationship unravelling that asks urgent questions about a contemporary society where our basest selves are hidden in plain sight.
- 2022
A darkly funny sports memoir about a mid-life crisis, exercise addiction, tennis, and how to grow up when you really, really don't want to. At forty-one, Scarlett Thomas was a successful novelist and a senior academic. She'd quit smoking, gotten healthier, settled down in a lovely house with a wonderful partner. She'd had all the therapy. Then her beloved dog died. Of her three fathers (she'd acquired a stepfather at ten), one died of a heroin overdose and the other two were diagnosed with cancer. Her sister-in-law became pregnant at the same time that she realized that she really was never going to become a mother. For the first time in her life, maintaining her ideal weight had become nearly impossible.She was supposed to grow up, but she didn't know how. So instead, she decided to regress: to go back to the thing she'd loved best as a child but had inexplicably abandoned: tennis. Thomas knows she's not the only person to have wondered if you throw enough money and time and passion at something, whether you can make your dream come true. 41-Love is heartbreaking but frequently darkly funny as Scarlett finds she'll do anything to win--almost anything.
- 2021
For tens of thousands of years, the oaks have stood proud and tall, and along with the other trees around this planet helped provide the air that we all breathe. They give us shelter from the rain, shade from the hot sun and provide a home for a variety of animals. They even provide stability to the ground we all walk on. We little creatures have made a big impact on our home since we first arrived here. See how the story unfolds, seen through the eyes of one great oak and one little guy who is hoping soon to be a great oak...if he gets the chance. See the oak's amusement and sometimes the horror at the goings-on of the strange but seemingly harmless little creatures who seem to have appeared from nowhere. How will they cope against enormous odds? Will the human race realise in time? Will there be someone to save them...maybe it's YOU?
- 2019
Galloglass
- 384 pages
- 14 hours of reading
In a magical library filled with Midwinter spells, Effie and her friends face the challenge of reuniting to avert the universe's destruction. As they navigate the mystery of disappearing cats, their adventure intertwines elements of fantasy and friendship, highlighting the importance of collaboration in overcoming dire threats.
- 2019
Oligarchy
- 224 pages
- 8 hours of reading
Oligarchy is Scarlett Thomas's fierce and brilliant new novel about power, privilege, and peer pressure. When Natasha, daughter of a Russian oligarch, arrives for her first day at an all-girl British boarding school, she finds herself thrown into a world of fierce pecking orders, eating disorders, and Instagram angst. Then her friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, and the world of the school gets ever darker and even weirder. Scarlett Thomas's first adult fiction since 2015 is a major return. Wildly frank, funny, and full of humanity, Oligarchy reminds us how insightful, vulnerable, brilliant, and misunderstood teenagers are, never more so than now.
- 2017
Dragon's Green
- 352 pages
- 13 hours of reading
The most exciting debut in children's fiction since HARRY POTTER. Immersive, engaging, original; delightful in its details (a bun shop that serves as a portal to Otherworld; a library of Last Editions; a Princess School in which girls are trained to be appealing to dragons); playful, warm and yet thrilling, too JOANNE HARRIS
- 2016
Popco, English edition
- 480 pages
- 17 hours of reading
Alice is quietly becoming the star of PopCo's 'ideation' team. Now she's been called to a mysterious 'thought camp' in Devon where they are brainstorming over the toy market for teenage girls. Alice thinks she's cracked it, but suddenly she's not sure she wants to unleash it on the world.
- 2016
Monkeys with Typewriters
- 496 pages
- 18 hours of reading
How to write fiction and unlock the secret power of stories
- 2015
The Seed Collectors
- 384 pages
- 14 hours of reading
"Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment. Not that anyone has much time for enlightenment. Fleur, left behind at the crumbling Namaste House, must step into Oleander's role as guru to lost and lonely celebrities. Bryony wants to lose the weight she put on after her botanist parents disappeared, but can't stop drinking. And Charlie struggles to make sense of his life after losing the one woman he could truly love. A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world's most daring and brilliant writers. As Henry James said of George Eliot's Middlemarch, The Seed Collectors is a 'treasurehouse of detail' revealing all that it means to be connected, to be part of a society, to be part of the universe and to be human."--

