Stephanie Scott Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Stephanie Scott
Stephanie Scott is Singaporean-British and was born and grew up in South East Asia. She read English Literature at the Universities of Cambridge and York, where she specialized in Renaissance literature, and has an M.St in Creative Writing from Oxford University.

Right when she was beginning her PhD at Cambridge, she made the decision that she just couldn’t face the mere idea of ‘being locked inside a garret’. So she took a job at Lehman Brothers on their hedge fund desk. While she worked late nights on deals, she would dream of becoming a novelist and scan all the websites for courses on creative writing. Finally taking the plunge, she applied to Oxford University’s creative writing master’s programme and at the Faber Academy. She got accepted to both and decided she would do both, and actually pursue writing seriously.

She was given a British Association of Japanese Studies Toshiba Studentship for the anthropological work on “What’s Left of Me Is Yours” and was made a member of the British Japanese Law Association as a result of the research she did.

Stephanie was a runner up in the Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award for an early draft for the manuscript, the A.M. Heath Prize, and the Arvon Jerwood Prize for Literature. She was also named one of the Ten Best Debut Novelists of 2020 by The Observer.

“What’s Left of Me Is Yours” came into being after Stephanie read a story in the news in the year 2010 about a woman that was murdered in Tokyo in a case involving a marriage breakup agent. The whole industry, as well as the fact the marriage breakup agent claimed he loved the woman he was accused of murdering, stuck with her. Stephanie found the humanity of this factual story that drew her to this tale. She did a lot of extensive research on the Japanese legal system and a bunch of hard work in order to combine fiction with a lot of fact.

At the time she read the story in the Times, she was newly married at the time, and was thinking about things like enduring relationships and love. Stephanie always found herself wondering if you could really love somebody and have them killed. Since love usually requires selflessness, then she thought about how there are just as many different kinds of love as there people.

In all, she spent ten years working on the novel, from researching and living in Japan (where she visited each and every location) to its release date. As she worked on the novel, she had a lot of interest from agents, however, she felt it was important to finish the book on her own terms.

When she was ready, she shipped it off and had a total of 23 agents interested in it. A week after Anthony Harwood, the man she hired to be her agent, sent it out, he had secured a six-figure offer from Doubleday, which made Stephanie cry and laugh like a madwoman while on the phone to him.

It was a woman named Louise Doughty who mentored her and supported her novel a lot, and she taught her the Faber novel course. It was her that got her to decide to leave finance and begin focusing a lot on the book.

Stephanie finds that she has to work at her desk in her study, and she must know what it is that she is writing about. A bunch of this novel was drafted just by writing what she wanted without any planning out of where it would be going. The novel is so based in its research that she had to have the grounding firmly in place before she could even start writing.

Stephanie’s debut novel, called “What’s Left of Me Is Yours”, was released in the year 2020 and is from the mystery genre. The novel was published by Doubleday Books.

“What’s Left of Me Is Yours” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2020. In Japan, one daughter explores the crime of passion that wound up taking her mom’s life. She looks for the truth about her mom’s life, as well as her murder.

Sumiko was only seven years old when her mom was murdered and her dad moved away. She was raised by a grandfather that maintained her mom was killed in a car crash. Twenty years later, she answers the phone that was meant for him from the prison administrator who has information about inmate Kaitaro Nakamura. However, when she realizes whom she is speaking to, she hangs up.

With only this single detail, she sets off on an obsessive quest. She finds an article with the headline “WAKARESASEYA AGENT GOES TO FAR?” where she learns about Kaitaro working in the ‘marriage breakup’ industry as an agent.

The guy, it turns out, was hired by her dad to seduce her mom in order to provide the necessary grounds for a divorce. He claims that he and her mom actually fell in love with each other and were close to beginning a new life with each other.

Sumiko meets with Nakamura’s defense lawyer, the lady hands over all the videotaped interviews with her client and all the files she has on him. Weaving through this tale of Sumiko’s hunt and all her memories from her childhood is the tale about her mom and her mom’s lover. From the instant he pretended to meet her by accident at the market and moving right to the murder scene.

This is a meticulously researched novel that some enjoyed reading slowly in order to appreciate the many exquisite details of Japanese culture that the pages contain. Some read certain select lines over and over to take it all in. This is a tragically beautiful, haunting and sensuous, and an ultimately redemptive story. Stephanie delivers a novel that is a story of love and family masterfully woven that makes you forget all about the crime. It is an extremely beautiful novel, one that defies genre.

Some found this to be less a mystery story than a study of cultural mores and different emotions.