Sarah Waters, Featured Author, Little, Brown Book Group

Sarah Waters was born in Wales. She has won a Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and her books have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith and The Night Watch have been adapted for television. Sarah Waters has been named Author of the Year four times: by the British Book Awards, the Booksellers' Association, Waterstone's Booksellers and the Stonewall Awards. She lives in London.

* The Orange Prize short-listed, Booker Prize short-listed, critically adored, third novel from Sarah Waters - reissued in with a stunning new jacketLondon 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves - fingersmiths - under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her 'family'. But from the moment she draws breath, Sue's fate is linked to that of another orphan growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away.Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D in English Literature and has lectured for the Open University. She lives in London.www.sarahwaters.comAll of Sarah's novels have been SUNDAY TIMES bestsellersSarah Waters was the winner of Writer of the Year at the Stonewall Awards 2009Over half a million copies of Sarah Waters' novels have been sold.Fingersmith - shortlisted for Orange Prize 2002 and for the Booker Prize 2002 and winner of the Ellis Peters Prize

* An eerie and utterly compelling novel of mystery and seduction set in a women's prison in Victorian London.Set in and around the women's prison at Milbank in the 1870's , AFFINITY is an eerie and utterly compelling ghost story, a complex and intriguing literary mystery and a poignant love story with an unexpected twist in the tale. Following the death of her father, Margaret Prior has decided to pursue some 'good work' with the lady criminals of one of London's most notorious gaols. Surrounded by prisoners, murderers and common thieves, Margaret feels herself drawn to one of the prisons more unlikely inmates - the imprisoned spiritualist - Selina Dawes. Sympathetic to the plight of this innocent-seeming girl, Margaret sees herself dispensing guidance and perhaps friendship on her visits, little expecting to find herself dabbling in a twilight world of seances, shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions.Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a PhD in English Literature and has taught at the Open University.Sales of TIPPING THE VELVET now exceed 23,500 copies in B & C formats and continues to sell on.Sales of AFFINITY in C format are just under 6,000 copies.Sarah Waters won a Betty Trask Award for TIPPING THE VELVET and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Award

* The brilliant and chilling new novel from Sarah Waters - shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2009
* 'Sarah Waters has worked a spell' GUARDIANIn a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, its owners - mother, son and daughter - struggling to keep pace. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes and three of her four novels have been adapted for television.The first Cactus TV Book Club pickShortlisted for the South Bank Show Award for Literaturewww.sarahwaters.comHB and C format sales so far of 76,000 copies - a SUNDAY TIMES BestsellerFilm rights have been optioned by Potboiler ProductionsSarah Waters is the winner of Writer of the Year at the Stonewall Awards 2009

* Sarah Water's wonderfully lush, sensuous and bawdy debut novel set in the music halls of the late 19th century - reissued with a stunning new jacketPiercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.

A saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King - oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End 'tom'.The heroine of Sarah Waters's audacious first novel knows her destiny, and seems content with it. Her place is in her father's seaside restaurant, shucking shellfish and stirring soup, singing all the while. "Although I didn't believe the story told to me by Mother--that they had found me as a baby in an oyster-shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten me for lunch--for 18 years I never doubted my own oysterish sympathies, never looked beyond my father's kitchen for occupation, or for love." At night Nancy Astley often ventures to the nearby music hall, not that she has illusions of being more than an audience member. But the moment she spies a new male impersonator--still something of a curiosity in England circa 1888--her years of innocence come to an end and a life of transformations begins.Club isn't outr? enough for her. Kitting Nancy out in full, elegant drag, she dares the front desk to turn them away. "We are here," she mocks, "for the sake of the irregular."Kerry Fried, Amazon.comINDEPENDENT ON SUNDAYSarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes and three of her four novels have been adapted for television.www.sarahwaters.comAll of Sarah's novels have been SUNDAY TIMES bestsellersFilmed for the BBC, a cult classicSarah Waters was the winner of Writer of the Year at the Stonewall Awards 2009Over half a million copies of Sarah Waters' novels have been sold

Sarah Waters, the award-winning author of three novels set in Victorian London, returns with a stunning novel that marks a departure from the 19th century.Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller.
This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching . . . Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret . . . Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover . . . Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances . . .

Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises and twists. The Night Watch is thrilling. A towering achievement.The Night Watch is a truthful, lovely book that needs no conjuring tricks to make you want to read it again' Philip Hensher, ObserverThe Night Watch leaves you with the sense of having read something rich and complex pared down with consummate skill by a first-class storyteller into a series of deceptively simple tales of love. Which is a fancy way of saying that Sarah Waters's latest....this outstandingly gifted novelist releases her imagination into her most compelling depiction yet' Peter Kemp, Sunday TimesCarol Ann Duffy, Daily TelegraphThrice crowned 2003 Author of the Year - by the Booksellers Association, Waterstone's and The British Book Awards. Winner of The South Bank Show Award, Sunday Times Author of the Year, The Somerset Maugham Award and the CWA. Shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes.No 1. Sunday Times BestsellerShortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Booker prizeMore than 50,000 copies sold in hardback and 30,000 export C formats.Sarah Waters continues to grow in stature. After only three novels, she is one of Britain's finestNamed Writer of the Year at the Stonewall Awards 2006Over half a million copies of Sarah Waters' novels have been sold.Book of the Year in the Sunday Times, the Guardian and five other broadsheets

Is there a story that you would wish to pass on to the next generation, and would yourself happily read again now?