Greece_Destination-Reads_Article-header

Reading lists

9 holiday reads set in Greece

‘The bastard child of Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith’ METRO

On Java Road

[A] superbly atmospheric reportage of a place and time... [On Java Road is] his most compulsive yet

Marvellously convincing evocations of fractious, tear-gas-canister-strewn Hong Kong... Osborne...presents every country his novels visit clearly, without imposing his own gloss

In the growing footprint of what he deems "Planet Tourism," his novels have become his radical reworking of travel writing - as sensual, provocative and riveting portraits of lives and places in flux

Masterly ... This story of moral failings and totalitarian excess is as disturbing as it is irresistible

Osborne's whodunnit is wrapped in an atmospheric portrait both of a particular place and time, and of the creation and destruction of a friendship. Highly recommended

[A] timely, elegantly written novel

A finely judged blend of mystery and menace will keep you guessing

Born in England, Lawrence Osborne is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Forgiven, The Ballad of a Small Player, Hunters in the Dark, Beautiful Animals, Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe novel (commissioned by the Raymond Chandler estate), The Glass Kingdom and On Java Road. His non-fiction ranges from memoir through travelogue to essays, including Bangkok Days, The Naked Tourist and The Wet and the Dry. His short story 'Volcano' was selected for Best American Short Stories 2012. 
 
The Forgiven, starring Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith and Jessica Chastain was released in 2022. Osborne lives in Bangkok.

A veteran British journalist living in Hong Kong investigates the disappearance of a student protestor amidst the pro-democracy demonstrations in this unsettling new novel from the acclaimed author of The Forgiven 
 
After twenty years as an ex-pat reporter in Hong Kong, Adrian Gyle has almost nothing to show for it. But now the streets are choked with students demanding democratic freedoms, and the old world is beginning to fall apart. 
 
Adrian's old friend Jimmy Tang, the scion of a wealthy Hong Kong family, has begun a reckless affair with Rebecca, a leading pro-democracy protestor. But when Rebecca disappears and Jimmy goes to ground, Adrian unearths the familiar old urge to investigate. Pursuing Rebecca's ghost to Java Road where the city's dead congregate, Adrian re-assembles her final hours - as he struggles to distinguish between delusion and reality. 
 
'Osborne's whodunnit is wrapped in an atmospheric portrait both of a particular place and time, and of the creation and destruction of a friendship. Highly recommended' GUARDIAN 
 
'Osborne goes from strength to strength' LIONEL SHRIVER 
 
'Osborne handles surface and depth with immense skill, as only great writers can' DEBORAH LEVY, FINANCIAL TIMES 
 
'If the purpose of a novel is to take you away from the everyday and show you something different, then Osborne is succeeding, and handsomely' LEE CHILD, NEW YORK TIMES

The Glass Kingdom

A tense, stunningly well-observed heist novel following an American woman on the run in the blazing heat of Bangkok, from 'the bastard child of Graham Greene and Patrica Highsmith' (Metro)

Showing Osborne at the height of his powers, The Glass Kingdom upends the Western reader's most basic assumptions about the human world . . . stylish and disquieting

Bangkok is the star of this accomplished novel. Its denizens are aliens to themselves, glittering on the horizon of their own lives, moving - restless and rootless and afraid - though a cityscape that has more stories than they know

The author's exceptional descriptive skills fuel an overwhelming sense of menace . . . the next day you will still be thinking of Sarah's fate with horror

Osborne's novels are lavishly filmic . . . The setting is luxurious, the lifestyle hedonistic, the climate oppressively hot. Prodigious amounts of alcohol are consumed. As events accelerate towards a violent finale, the reader is kept guessing. How severe will the consequences be for the interloper? Which will prevail, revenge or forgiveness?

Lawrence Osborne goes from strength to strength. In The Glass Kingdom he once again displays a feel for the Westerner abroad in an alien culture, where misunderstandings can prove deadly. The author has lived for years in Bangkok, whose seediness runs deeper than the superficially icky red light district most foreign writers take on. Great characters, plenty of suspense, and a killer ending

An atmospheric, gripping novel . . . a horror-satire of globalised capital in which money might buy you idle time or the semblance of power, but it also makes you a target. The Kingdom's residents are blind to its fragility until it is almost too late: as apt a metaphor for 2020 as a novel could hope to provide

Osborne, who specialises in stories about hapless Westerners coming a cropper in foreign lands, has another hit on his hands with this sinister, sensuous and wonderfully evocative tale

Oozing menace, Osborne's compelling novel is wonderfully atmospheric and deeply macabre

Lawrence Osborne did not disappoint in his atmospheric thriller The Glass Kingdom

Osborne masterfully depicts . . . a Bangkok where an irrational yet intoxicating mix of Buddhism and animism holds sway alongside laissez-faire economics . . . eroding his characters' sense of autonomy through attrition

A tense, stunningly well-observed heist novel from 'the bastard child of Graham Greene and Patrica Highsmith' (Metro) 
 
Sarah Talbot Jennings, a young American living in New York, has fled to Bangkok to disappear. Armed with a suitcase full of cash, she takes up residence at the Kingdom, a glittering complex slowly sinking into its own twilight. There, against a backdrop of shadowy gossip and intrigue, she is soon drawn into the orbit of the Kingdom's glamorous ex-pat women. But when political chaos and a frenzied uprising wrack the streets below, and Sarah witnesses something unspeakable, her safe haven begins to feel like a trap. 
 
 From a master of atmosphere and suspense comes a brilliantly unsettling story of cruelty and psychological unrest, and an enthralling glimpse into the shadowy crossroads of karma and human greed.

Only to Sleep

Philip Marlowe returns - this time penned by cult favourite Lawrence Osborne

A highly distinctive writer who quickly becomes addictive… I loved it

A brilliant Raymond Chandler continuation novel with an ageing Philip Marlowe. Osborne and Chandler are a perfect match

It's a joy to see Philip Marlowe lured back for one last job by the gleefully unsentimental Lawrence Osborne... If you like noir, pour yourself something cool and enjoy one final dark night of the soul

The decayed grandeur of the setting, the mystery of an alluring femme fatale, an old man's tussle with his conscience and his ageing body, and a healthy number of spectacular set-pieces work a subtle magic... both a convincing Marlowe and a seedily satisfying thriller

This is the best Marlowe novel I have read apart from the master's own works... it's the only one I can imagine Chandler liking

Osborne succeeds brilliantly... captures the dreamlike quality of the original Marlowe novels

Superb... Osborne's dialogue and description echo Chandler's wit and world-weariness with uncanny skill

An exhilarating talent...one of our finest writers

Lawrence Osborne, an accomplished writer of fiction and nonfiction, has been asked to imagine a new case for Philip Marlow and -- have a smell from the barrel, all you gunsels and able grables -- it crackles...brisk and disarming

The tone here is elegiac, the pace relaxed. If you’ve missed Marlowe, you’ll find this a worthy addition to the canon

Philip Marlowe is back in a seedily satisfying thriller on the US-Mexican border

Osborne does a fine job in giving Marlowe a fresh assignment in this evocative, melancholy homage… Only to Sleep is more than a detective story. It is also a meditation on ageing and how, even in the autumn of a man’s life, he still is driven to pit his skills and courage against dangerous adversaries

Osborne's brilliant innovation is to show us Philip Marlowe as an old man in the late eighties, retired to Mexico. Marlowe's got one last job: looking for a man called Zinn

A gripping, elegantly written crime story about age and decline… with its blend of mystery and humanity it’s exactly the sort of novel [Raymond Chandler] would have been pleased to inspire

Obviously a lover of Chandler’s work, Osborne has written a novel of excellence, with a good, slightly chaotic plot (as, often, were Chandler’s) and some wonderful atmosphere

The most enjoyable book I’ve read in a long time… I enjoyed it more than the original… it’s Lawrence Osborne being just brilliant

I’m lost in admiration for what Lawrence Osborne has done here… he’s created a brilliant standalone novel… it’s a wonderful book

A new Philip Marlowe story based on Raymond Chandler's creation. Marlowe is the man I want to be, both the book character and as played by Humphrey Bogart on film. Here is Marlowe at 72... which just happens to be my age

A valedictory investigation, complete with sinister bad guys and a memorable femme fatale

Osborne has mastered Chandler’s gift for metaphor…and deepens Marlowe’s psyche as he responds to “a sad summons from the depths of his own wasted past”

Osborne’s continuation of Raymond Chandler feels like the real thing

[Only to Sleep] is compelling and Osborne often captures Marlowe’s voice

Osborne gets Chandler and his version of the enduring detective, Philip Marlowe, is the best I've read... This mystery is well plotted and plays out with a twist to satisfy the readers who figure things out for themselves but still like to be surprised… if Osborne were to write another Marlowe thriller… I will be there to read it

Wealthy dead American. Beautiful young widow. This case has PI Philip Marlowe’s name written all over it. Is it enough to bring him back for one last adventure? 
 
The year is 1988. The place, Baja California. Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is living out his retirement sipping margaritas and playing cards when in saunter two men dressed like undertakers with a case that has his name written all over it. 
 
His mission is to investigate Donald Zinn – supposedly drowned off his yacht, leaving a much younger and now very rich wife. Marlowe’s speciality. But is Zinn actually alive? And are the pair living off the spoils? 
 
'Osborne and Chandler are a perfect match' William Boyd 
 
 
Discover the rest of the inimitable Philip Marlowe series – nine classic Chandler adventures, from The Big Sleep to The Long Goodbye, available now in paperback and ebook from Penguin Books.

Beautiful Animals

Choose your holiday read as carefully as you choose your friends... a sinister and ravishing literary thriller

Both impossible to put down and beautifully written: a great combo

An astute, unsentimental critique of the contemporary world in crisis... Osborne handles surface and depth with immense skill, as only great writers can do. Beautiful Animals is his most accomplished book so far -- a big, clever, crazed beast of a novel

Often almost literally bristling with menace… his Hydra is rugged with physical immediacy. Silhouetted against it, emotions fluctuate, sexual frissons flicker back and forth, destinies tremble in the balance… It’s the brilliance with which Osborne conjures all this up that leaves you eager to see where his nomadic imagination will take him next

Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice

Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice… The novel takes on the tone of an existential noir, evoking writers like Jean-Patrick Manchette and Georges Simenon... An heir to Graham Greene... he shares with Greene an interest in what might be called the moral thriller

Complex and thrilling, Beautiful Animals confirms Osborne as one of Britain’s very best novelists

Beautiful Animals is terrifically well constructed, written with mean authority, brilliantly evocative about place … A masterpiece of disaffection

Osborne is interested in what his characters do when events are wrested out of their control, his narratives unfurling like a set of carefully lined-up dominoes… It’s exciting for sure, but cuts closer to the bone than Osborne’s previous novels and is all the more distressing and depressing for it

Superlatively gripping… Osborne plunges his characters far from the luminescent surface and into the darkest depths

A thriller that is full of dazzling sunshine

Osborne crafts a rich, nourishing mood in his sun-drenched tale, while offering astute observations of privilege and obscene wealth ... a perfect read to devour in one go on a white-hot, breezeless day

A stylish, slow-burn novel… Atmospheric and well observed, with Osborne’s sinuous prose exerting its own fascination

A taut and provocative psychological thriller with a topical twist… His enthralling Greek tragedy is a deft examination of unchecked greed, twisted loyalties and the corrupted mind

Lawrence Osborne is an enigmatic, unpindownable writer

Beautiful Animals supplies two satisfying, but contradictory, feelings. On the one hand, you are immersed in the languid atmosphere of Hydra... But slipping through the charm with all the page-turning excitement of a beautifully written literary thriller is the nagging dread that something is about to go horribly wrong...

Osborne is both a consummate stylist and an acute observer of moral ambivalence and this quietly simmering, intoxicatingly good book lingers uneasily in the air, like a hangover

A cold-eyed look at bourgeois ennui and the parasitic nature of privilege… compulsive reading

An absorbing psychological study of greed, loyalty and cultural conflict

The bastard child of Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith

A masterful and sophisticated psychological thriller that explores moral ambiguity from multiple perspectives

Taut psychological thriller that’s as sinister as it is thrilling. A real unputdownable effort that examines morality and privilege

Smart, seductive… A sophisticated page-turner

Osborne is a literary writer – and a brilliant one – and this sumptuously written superbly observed study of misplaced idealism and moral expediency reads a bit like a thriller penned by F Scott Fitzgerald

Malevolent, gripping… A compelling read, acutely observed and beautifully written. For all the character defects of the principal protagonists, the reader wants to find out what happens to them. It matters. And there can be no higher praise than that

This complex, thrilling novel focuses on Naomi Codrington, a young lawyer who befriends Samantha, a malleable American teenager, while summering with her father and stepmother on the Greek island of Hydra. When they find a Syrian refugee washed up on the shore, calamity comes rushes in.

Thrilling, chilling and contains the following subtext: best stay at home

The best intentions can be deadly 
 
During a white-hot summer on the idyllic Greek island of Hydra, two girls fall into one another’s lives to devastating effect. 
 
When Samantha, a young, impressionable American, meets Naomi, a Brit with a taste for danger, their relationship quickly takes on a special intensity. Amid the sun, sea and high society of island life, their imaginations are sparked when one day they find a young Arab man, Faoud, washed up on shore, a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean. But when their seemingly simple plan to help the stranger goes wrong, all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.

The Forgiven

East meets West with shattering conclusions in this stylish, taut and brilliant piece of cinematic storytelling from Lawrence Osborne, soon to be a major film adaptation starring Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennes

A sinister story about guilt, atonement and restitution, fashioned from lean, prowling prose

A terrifically realised encounter between the clashing values of traditional Islam and the hedonistic, secular West... Beautifully written, painfully resolved.

More than a stylish thriller… The central plot has parallels with The Bonfire of the Vanities, while the socialites could be straight out of The Great Gatsby

A superbly compelling novel... As menacing and engrossing as the best McEwan

Osborne brings together all his authorial talents in this gripping and sophisticated thriller

Stylish, somehow both lavish and muscular at the same time

Utterly compelling; at the risk of trotting out a cliché, I couldn't put the book down

A brilliantly observed tale of class and hedonism

'Utterly compelling...I couldn't put the book down' Observer 
'Surprising and dark and excellent' New York Times 
'A gripping and sophisticated thriller' Independent 
 
Soon to be a major film adaptation starring Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennes 
 
David and Jo Henniger are on their way to a party at their old friends' home, deep in the Moroccan desert. But as a groggy David navigates the dark desert roads, two young men spring from the roadside, the car swerves and collides with one of the boys... 
 
Meanwhile, festivities at the house are in full flow. Under the watchful eyes of their Moroccan staff, the extravagant hosts attend to the whims of their glittering, insatiable guests as the party rages on into a new day. The stage is set for a weekend in which David and Jo must come to terms with their fateful act and its shattering consequences. 
 
'As menacing and engrossing as the best McEwan' Sunday Times

Hunters in the Dark

The brilliant new novel from Lawrence Osborne – “a modern Graham Greene” (Sunday Times) – author of The Forgiven and The Ballad of a Small Player

Osborne’s brilliance as a travel writer places his web of deceit, greed and need … in a world conjured up with dazzling immediacy … Sumptuous and sinister, languorous and tense, this is a novel that gives Osborne’s remarkable talents haunting scope

If the purpose of a novel is to take you away from the everyday and show you something different, then Osborne is succeeding, and handsomely. Hunters in the Dark is a novel of immersion… shaped like a quiet dream. As such, it’s an unqualified success, and I hope it enjoys a wide readership

Cambodia…comes splendidly to life in Osborne’s prose… This is a tip-top thriller. Osborne knows how to keep the pages turning; he is a name to watch

Edgy and gripping … Written with unfailing precision and beauty, Hunters in the Dark stakes out territory different to the many writers to whom Osborne has been compared.

Besides being a gripping thriller, it's a fine meditation on luck, fate and chance and a wonderful evocation of Cambodia, a country of ghosts, spirits and shadows

Fans of Lawrence Osborne’s excellent, sour-tasting novels will recognize several ingredients in this latest… The novel’s power lies in Osborne’s needling descriptions of hedonism and decay in a country haunted by history, superstition and curdled dreams

In Hunters in the Dark, Osborne has created a wonderful evocation of Cambodia, that most haunted, seductive country – haunted both by the spirits always believed by its people to have inhabited every part of the land and buy the dreadful crimes committed so recently by the Khmer Rouge, who killed a quarter of the population in three years. … Hunters in the Dark is itself pitilessly good. Those comparisons with Graham Greene aren’t even flattering anymore

Steeped in the menacing, fatalistic atmosphere of a country with a bloody recent past, this is a terrific novel with an ending that is utterly gripping and satisfying

Hunters in the Dark is Lawrence Osborne’s third strong novel in a row and this rare achievement is made all the more impressive because each of these three novels has improved on the last … The literary thriller is an awkward genre, usually lacking in either thrills or quality of prose, but with Hunters in the Dark, Osborne has proved once again that he can handle both and with aplomb

The much-travelled Osborne delivers on a load of levels, not least his characters, who can ooze silky menace, or be totally soulless, desperate or lost. All are convincing in the setting of the exotic, once-deadly country. And with his easy and vivid descriptions, this masterpiece will give you prickly heat rash

Dramatic and involving, an exhilarating adventure crafted in crisp, sharp prose. Osborne gives us rich swathes of local colour … Most of all, it is Robert and his precarious fate that keep us rapt. On the first page he is described as having ; "the aura of poverty about him"; roughly two hundred pages later his beloved Sophal tells him he is spooking people: "They say you have an aura of disaster about you." He does and it’s powerful; once the novel’s momentum kicks in, we’re with him all the way until the bitter end

Very fine...an excellent addition to the literature of personal displacement. Grappling with manifold questions about identity and the tragic futility of material aspirations in a ruthless, brittle world, this novel draws you into a sun-struck realm where the survival of the fittest is more predicated by chance and where violence is a sudden, opportunistic enterprise

The best writer you’ve never heard of, Osborne is hitting mean form as a writer of exotic literary thrillers. … Sensual, dream-like and gripping

This is an elegantly told story that will keep you intrigued until you hit the back cover

It’s with expert control of the narrative here that [Osborne] captures a life adrift

Darkly sinister, threatening and compelling, this is one you’ll come back to again and again

Alive with malice and grace, this is a taut tale reminiscent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith

Prey and predators circle in lush southeast Asian settings that gleam with Osborne’s dazzling skill as a travel-writer

It shines with intrigue, with investigations into the nature of the non-rational, and evil, wrapped up in taught plotting

One of Britain’s most accomplished novelists.

Lawrence Osborne is an experienced, competent author with an impressive knowledge of Asia… Comparisons with Graham Greene seem to be generously offered by other reviewers and I’ve already alluded to Conrad and a Patricia Highsmith yet my impression is that Mr. Osborne has a style all of his own.

'A modern Graham Greene' Sunday Times 
 
Robert Grieve – pushing thirty and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher – decides to go missing. 
 
As he crosses the border from Thailand to Cambodia, he tests the threshold of a new future. And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events involving a bag of ‘jinxed’ money, a suave American, a corrupt policeman and a rich doctor’s daughter, in which Robert’s life is changed forever. 
 
Alive with malice and grace, this is a taut tale reminiscent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith: a story of double identities, and innocence in the midst of evil, from a master of atmosphere and observation.

Lawrence Osborne

Brilliant... clear but strong, full of mood and meaning

If you appreciate stories with stings in the tail, you will enjoy this fiendishly cunning new collection... Osborne not only has the knack of keeping readers guessing, but the rarer gift of drawing them into the interior world of his characters

This is stylish, subversive fiction from a writer at the top of his game

Shewdly manipulated tension thrums throughout this latest collection from the prolific Osborne. These globe-trotting tales are perfect for the season

'Brilliant' SUNDAY TIMES 
'Compelling and unnerving' SPECTATOR 
 
This first collection of stories by Lawrence Osborne perfectly showcases his talent for tension, atmosphere - and characters out of their depth 
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
A deaf girl hired as a maid by a wealthy New York couple turns the tables on her obliviously abusive employers and answers blackmail with blackmail. A psychiatrist treating a girl in rural England becomes ensnared in a love affair that threatens to destroy her career. A naïve young linguist sent to the forests of Irian Jaya is manipulated into betraying her mission by a ruthless and disturbed pastor. 
 
Lawrence Osborne’s stories explore characters lost in the shadowed borders between the mundane, the fantastical and the violence of the natural world. 
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
 
‘This is stylish, subversive fiction from a writer at the top of his game’ New Statesman, Books of the Year 
 
‘If you appreciate stories with stings in the tail, you will enjoy this fiendishly cunning new collection’ Mail on Sunday

Lawrence Osborne

Praise for Burning Angel and Other Stories

Brilliant... clear but strong, full of mood and meaning

Compelling and unnerving

If you appreciate stories with stings in the tail, you will enjoy this fiendishly cunning new collection... Osborne not only has the knack of keeping readers guessing, but the rarer gift of drawing them into ...

Brilliant... clear but strong, full of mood and meaning

Compelling and unnerving

If you appreciate stories with stings in the tail, you will enjoy this fiendishly cunning new collection... Osborne not only has the knack of keeping readers guessing, but the rarer gift of drawing them into ...

Brilliant... clear but strong, full of mood and meaning

Compelling and unnerving

If you appreciate stories with stings in the tail, you will enjoy this fiendishly cunning new collection... Osborne not only has the knack of keeping readers guessing, but the rarer gift of drawing them into ...

Books by Lawrence Osborne

Series by Lawrence Osborne

Philip Marlowe

Articles featuring Lawrence Osborne

9 holiday reads set in Greece

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter