A reading retreat is a gift you give yourself. And this June in Greece, one of the gifts is getting to spend a week with a man who will forever change the way you look at your neighbors.

There’s a particular kind of thriller that doesn’t need a spy, a detective, or a serial killer with a signature. It just needs you — your house, your relationship, your daily commute — and a writer with the darkest of imaginations to make all of it quietly, unbearably wrong.

That writer is Mark Edwards.

Mark Edwards writes books in which scary things happen to ordinary people — and he has made that deceptively simple premise into a global phenomenon. His novels have sold over five million copies and topped the bestseller lists numerous times. The New York Times described his latest, The Wasp Trap, as a book that “moves with increasingly head-spinning velocity as the secrets come spilling out.”

So what is it about Mark Edwards that hooks readers so completely?

It starts with a question. Not who did it, but what if this happened to me? He’s known for his “what if” scenarios, throwing normal people into unusual and deeply unsettling situations. What if your in-laws moved in and refused to leave? What if the neighbours in your new building weren’t what they seemed? What if the trip of a lifetime ended in something you could never speak about again? His characters are ordinary people thrown into strange situations and left to fend for themselves. That’s the terror of it. That’s why you read until 2 am.

Mark Edwards was born in Kent in 1970 and grew up in Hastings, East Sussex. His path to becoming a bestselling author was anything but linear — while pursuing a writing career, he worked in the civil service, in customer service for a rail franchise, and eventually for a London-based book publisher. He even spent time as an English teacher in Tokyo. All of that living, all of those ordinary jobs in ordinary places, fed directly into the texture of his fiction.

When Amazon launched its Kindle in Britain in 2010, Mark Edwards joined an emerging group of writers who found success through self-publishing. His first collaboration with co-author Louise Voss climbed the charts, earned them TV appearances, and eventually a four-book deal with HarperCollins. His solo debut, The Magpies, arrived in 2013 — and he hasn’t stopped writing since, producing over a dozen thrillers. Wikipedia

Edwards cites Stephen King, Ira Levin, Ruth Rendell, and Linwood Barclay as his inspirations — a lineup that tells you everything about the DNA of his work: literary dread, psychological precision, and plots that will not let you go. Praise from fellow crime writers has been equally emphatic. Clare Mackintosh called his work “clever, contemporary, and chillingly plausible.” C.L. Taylor said his writing was “utterly compelling” and that she “couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.”

And now, this June, you get to sit with him in Greece and ask him how he does it.

That’s the real privilege of a reading retreat: not just the books, but the conversation behind them. Mark Edwards has spoken about being drawn to the way ordinary people react to difficult, frightening situations — and to creating characters and making everything go wrong for them. Imagine asking him where that instinct comes from. Imagine talking craft, tension, and the particular art of keeping a reader in a cold sweat for three hundred pages, while the Aegean glitters outside your window.

The retreat runs June 2–9, 2026, in Tolo, Greece, a week that includes author sessions, a book signing, excursions to Epidaurus and Hydra, and an evening in Nafplio, the first capital of Greece. It is, in the best possible way, the kind of week that doesn’t happen twice.

Mark Edwards has spent his career convincing readers that the ordinary can become extraordinary in the worst ways. Here, for one week, he’ll show you how it becomes extraordinary in the very best.

Secure your spot at the Imagine Greece Reading Retreat — June 2–9, 2026, in Tolo, Greece. Limited availability.