Sarah Pearse Books in Order – Complete List
New York Times bestselling author Sarah Pearse is best known for her Detective Elin Warner series. The series is a gothic thriller that is as creepy as atmospheric and will get you looking over your shoulders for many days after reading it. The trilogy ends with The Wilds released in 2024.
Here are the Sarah Pearse books in order of publication. So far, the reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Latest Sarah Pearse Books
Detective Elin Warner Books in Publication Order
- The Sanatorium, 2021
- The Retreat, 2022
- The Wilds, 2024
Elin Warner Books Overview
Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Long plagued by troubling rumors, the former abandoned sanatorium has since been renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel.
An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But Elin’s taken time off from her job as a detective, so when her estranged brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, Elin really has no reason not to accept.
Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge–there’s something about the hotel that makes her nervous. And when they wake the following morning to discover Laure is missing, Elin must trust her instincts if they hope to find her. With the storm closing off all access to the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic.
Elin is under pressure to find Laure, but no one has realized yet that another woman has gone missing. And she’s the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they are all in. . .
An idyllic wellness retreat has opened on an island off the English coast, promising rest and relaxation—but the island itself, known locally as Reaper’s Rock, has a dark past. Once the playground of a serial killer, it’s rumored to be cursed.
But now they can’t leave.
A young woman is found dead below the yoga pavilion in what seems to be a tragic fall. But Detective Elin Warner soon learns the victim wasn’t a guest—she wasn’t meant to be on the island at all.
And they would do anything to escape.
The longer Elin stays, the more secrets she uncovers. And when someone else drowns in a diving incident, Elin begins to suspect that there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. But why would someone target the guests at this luxury resort? Elin must find the killer—before the island’s history starts to repeat itself.
Most came to recharge and refresh. But someone’s here for revenge.
Detective Elin Warner unravels the mystery behind the disappearance of a young woman in a propulsive new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium
Since the dark events that scarred her childhood, Kier Templer escaped her hometown to live life on the road. She and her twin have never lost contact until, on a trip to a Portuguese national park, Kier vanishes without a trace.
Detective Elin Warner arrives in the same park ready to immerse herself in its vast wilderness – only to hear about Kier’s disappearance, and discover a disturbing map she left behind. The few strangers at an isolated campsite close ranks against Elin’s questions, and the park’s wild beauty starts to turn sinister.
Elin must untangle the clues to find out what really happened to Kier. But when you follow a trail, you have to be careful to watch your back…
Sarah Pearse brilliantly introduced readers to Elin Warner in The Sanatorium, with her exploits continuing in The Retreat; here, the series concludes with The Wilds, where the unanswered questions plaguing Elin are finally resolved.
Sarah Pearse Biography
Sarah Pearse was born in Devon, England, where she also grew up. She enjoyed writing from a very young age, so it was no surprise that she decided to study English and Creative Writing at Warwick. This allowed her to nurture her passion for writing and expand her knowledge, culminating in her bestselling debut series, Detective Erin Warner.
Having studied Biology, Physics, and English before, the Warwick courses helped her immensely as her tutors encouraged her to leverage her scientific knowledge and integrate it during the creative process.
Next, she completed a postgraduate diploma in broadcast journalism.
Before writing novels, Sarah Pearse wrote short stories that were later published in the Writers and Artists Yearbook. After being nominated for the Bristol Short Story Prize, her stories were also published in Mslexia, a UK magazine that caters to women who write. Her inclusion into Mslexia boosted her confidence enough to attempt – and finish – her first full-length novel which became a bestseller in its own right.
After graduating from her studies, Sarah lived in Switzerland for several years in her mid-twenties while also traveling around Western Europe for work. Her debut novel, The Sanatorium, got its inspiration from the author’s stay in Switzerland. In fact the setting of the locked-room thriller novel is the Swiss town of Crans Montana.
In an interview, Sarah Pearse mentioned that The Sanatorium was published during the Covid-19 lockdown, and this enabled her to keep in touch with her readers through online means such as Zoom and other online communication systems. Zoom was also used during a call with Reese Witherspoon. The novel was chosen as a ‘Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick’ and later as a ‘Waterstones Thriller of the Month.’
The second novel, The Retreat, takes place in a fictionalized version of Torquay which she calls Torhun, and the setting this time is a luxury wellness retreat. It was not only a New York Times bestseller but also a #1 Sunday Times bestseller.
The third novel of the trilogy, The Wilds, takes place in the wilderness of a Portuguese national park where Elin must find out why and how Kier disappeared.
The film rights to her novels have been sold to Studio Canal who work in partnership with a Hollywood production company.
Currently, Sarah Pearse lives in Torquay in Devon with her husband and two daughters, Rosie and Molly.