'Illuminating'

'A memorable, oddly beautiful book'

'A marvellous glimpse of the Japan that rarely peeks through the country's public image'

Fluent in the language, well-informed and disabused, [Booth] is in the fine tradition of hard-to-please travellers like Norman Douglas, Evelyn Waugh, and V.S. Naipaul. A sharp eye and a good memory for detail...give an astonishing immediacy to his account.

[Booth] achieved an extraordinary understanding of life as it is lived by ordinary Japanese....Frequently brilliant in his insights

'One of the classic Japan travel books of the modern age ... a vivid but witty portrayal of rural Japan in the seventies, and the quirky characters who populated it'

Booth vividly evokes his 2,000-mile, 128-day journey on foot from Japan's northernmost point, Cape Soya in Hokkaido, to Cape Sata in the south. As he recounts his misadventures on this epic trek, he engagingly reveals the realities of off-the-tourist-track Japan.

What an incredible debut novel. Clever, creepy and utterly compelling.

I loved it - such a wonderful sense of location, and the tension is knife edge-sharp. I was up at 5.30 in the mornings to read it.

A superb debut offering an astonishingly creepy and isolated backdrop, great characters, tension and twists. Hugely atmospheric with enough menace to keep you looking over your shoulder!

Tense and fast paced, filled with revelations to keep you hooked and all set in a wonderfully creepy Alpine location.

An atmospheric thriller with the perfect claustrophobic setting - a converted sanatorium in the remote Alps. This is equal parts creepy, suspenseful and gruesome - everything you could want in a novel for this genre. The heroine Elin is intensely flawed but totally relatable. This is a sure-fire hit guaranteed to keep you seeing shadows in the snow on those freezing winter nights. I loved it.

The perfect claustrophobic setting packed with mystery and edge-of-your-seat tension.

An elegant, tense and chilling read. The glowering Swiss Alps setting was beautifully rendered - for all the horrors, I still wanted to be there!

A superbly atmospheric crime debut. Deliciously creepy and clever, it's everything you could want in a thriller. Very highly recommended!

A spine-tingling setting, an unnerving cast of characters and so many incredibly creepy moments . . . this is not one to read before bed!

Sarah Pearse's The Sanatorium is a knockout. Mesmerizing, lyrical prose contrasts starkly with the dark story events in this debut thriller set at a remote luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps. Tense, claustrophobic, with a horrific connection between past and present that is utterly unpredictable - I loved this book!

It's hard to believe this is a debut novel, given how masterfully Sarah Pearse writes. The setting is starkly chilling, the characters are smart and vulnerable, and as you turn the pages, the slow creep of claustrophobia sets in . . . Highly recommended.

A chillingly vivid thriller in a fantastic setting - you can almost feel the icy Alpine wind on your face as you turn the pages.

A tense page-turner.

One of the most eagerly awaited debuts of the year.

The nail-biting suspense and spooky atmosphere of Sarah Pearse's thrilling debut novel kept me reading until late in the night. I loved Sarah's masterful descriptions of the Alpine setting, the creepy history of the hotel, and the growing sense of danger as the hapless characters are cut off from the outside world by a massive storm . . . just as the realisation dawns that a deranged killer is on the loose.

Tense, claustrophobic and chilling in every sense of the word.

Dark and suspenseful - I had shivers running down my spine as I read this chilling thriller.

An addictive, creepy and twisting read. The perfect gothic story for a cold February night.

An eerie, atmospheric novel that had me completely on the edge of my seat.

[A] menacing, creepy debut [...] There are echoes of Hitchcock and du Maurier, but Pearse has her own distinctive, emotional voice - one to be admired.

Tense, chilling and full of surprises.

Locked-room mysteries a la Agatha Christie are proving to be very popular right now, and this one doesn't disappoint.

This atmospheric chiller has a few shocks up its sleeve.

A mix of whodunnit and psychological thriller with hints of horror, this fine debut [...] is smartly structured and often powerful.

Spooky, chilling and claustrophobic.

This impressive debut is a twist on the classic locked-room mystery in a wonderfully eerie Gothic setting. Its sharp prose builds suspense through a series of twists that will send an Alpine chill up your spine, building to an unpredictable finale. This clever, compelling thriller deserves to be a bestseller and marks out Sarah Pearse as one to watch.

Want a book that's going to leave you chilled to the bone? This is it!

Sarah Pearse's chilling debut is making waves. The Sanatorium certainly has an eerie, cinematic appeal [...] With whispers of The Shining in setting and The Girl on the Train in pace.

I absolutely loved The Sanatorium - it gave me all the wintry thrills and chills. It was just wonderful.

Genuinely scary and deliciously atmospheric, and one of the best books of 2021, this international bestseller is guaranteed to give you goosebumps.

What a page-turner! Like Agatha Christie crossed with Scandi noir, and doing with Swiss mountains what Jane Harper books do with the Australian outback. Loved it, and can't wait for the next Elin book!