The Runner

The mind-expanding new thriller from the bestselling author of The Sleepwalkers and The End of Mr. Y

‘This thriller is pure pleasure … The Runner is fantastically pacy stuff, with more twists and reversals than an extremely gnarly cross-country course … Thomas is one of those novelists who would be spoken of in awed tones of admiration if only she weren’t so funny … Sun-soaked and fleet-footed … Thomas has a fabulous control of her tone and handles the jumps between thriller, action and farce with audacious skill' Sarah Ditum, The Times

He’s running for his life. And he’s running out of time.

On a sun-soaked Greek island, Jay is on the run. He’s been hunted since he was twenty years old: a contract on his life traded like a commodity, rising and falling with the price of Bitcoin. 

Stranded with no passport, loyalty points as his only currency and an assassin in hot pursuit, Jay’s only hope is to escape on a catamaran with a crew on their way to perform an exorcism on a dictator’s private island. When it becomes clear that his shipmates are even more dubious than they first seemed, Jay has to run again – this time into the arms of the beautiful Ellie, who is either his doom or his salvation. 

Caught in a web of high-finance, con-artists, the Book of Jonah and ultramarathons, Jay will have to choose between love and survival, and run for his life!

Darkly funny, sexy, exciting, philosophical and enthralling, The Runner is an unmissable literary treat from Britain’s most exciting novelist.

Praise for Scarlett Thomas

‘Muriel Spark’s disreputable niece’ Spectator 
‘She's a genius’ Douglas Coupland

‘Fiction roaring on all cylinders’ Guardian

‘Gloriously dark and tangled’ Observer
‘A dark, twisty, savagely … a smart, layered, stinging look at power and its abuse’ The Times
‘A work of peculiar, gonzo genius' The New York Times
‘Like a darker, funnier The White Lotus’ James Smythe 
‘Brilliant, savage and hilarious' Bidisha Mamata
'A twisty Gothic tale of vertiginous depths and haunting power' Sandra Newman
‘Ingenious and original’ Philip Pullman