The Handmaiden, a film adaptation of Fingersmith, directed by Park Chan-wook and starring Kim Tae-Ri, is now available.

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a baby farmer, who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby's household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves--fingersmiths--for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives--Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud's vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of--passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

Erotic and absorbing...Written with startling power.--The New York Times Book Review

Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.

I thought everything would change, after the war. And now, no one even mentions it. It is as if we all got together in private and said whatever you do don't mention that, like it never happened.

It's the late 1940s. Calm has returned to London and five people are recovering from the chaos of war.

In scenes set in a quiet dating agency, a bombed-out church and a prison cell, the stories of these five lives begin to intertwine and we uncover the desire and regret that has bound them together.

Sarah Waters's story of illicit love and everyday heroism takes us from a dazed and shattered post-war Britain back into the heart of the Blitz, towards the secrets that are hidden there.

Olivier-nominated playwright Hattie Naylor has created a thrilling and theatrically inventive adaptation of a great modern novel.

The stage adaptation of The Night Watch was premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, on 16 May 2016.

The volcanically sexy (USA Today) bestseller about a widow and her daughter who take a young couple into their home in 1920s London.

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned; the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa--a large, silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants--life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.

With the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the clerk class, the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances's life--or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize three times, Sarah Waters has earned a reputation as one of our greatest writers of historical fiction.

Soon to be a major motion picture--releasing August 31 in the US--the nationally bestselling and chillingly rendered ghost story--several sleepless nights are guaranteed (Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly).

One postwar summer, in his home in rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline. Its owners--mother, son, and daughter--are struggling to keep pace with a changing society. 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.

In the shadows of Victorian London, a tale of obsession and redemption unfolds.

Margaret Prior, an upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, has begun visiting the women's ward of Millbank prison, Victorian London's grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Amongst Millbank's murderers and common thieves, Margaret finds herself increasingly fascinated by on apparently innocent inmate, the enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes.

Selina was imprisoned after a séance she was conducting went horribly awry, leaving an elderly matron dead and a young woman deeply disturbed. Although initially skeptical of Selina's gifts, Margaret is soon drawn into a twilight world of ghosts and shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions, until she is at last driven to concoct a desperate plot to secure Selina's freedom, and her own.

As in her noteworthy deput, Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters brilliantly evokes the sights and smells of a moody and beguiling nineteenth-century London, and proves herself yet again a storyteller, in the words of the New York Times Book Review, of startling power.

A] wonderful novel...Waters is almost Dickensian in her wealth of description and depth of character.--Chicago Tribune

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of four Londoners--three women and a young man with a past--whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in tragedy, stunning surprise and exquisite turns, only to change irreversibly in the shadow of a grand historical event.

It's 1887 and Nancy Astley sits in the audience at her local music hall: she doesn't know it yet, but the next act on the bill will change her life. Tonight is the night she'll fall in love... with the thrill of the stage and with Kitty Butler, a girl who wears trousers.

Giddy with desire and hungry for experience, Nancy follows Kitty to London where unimaginable adventures await.

Sarah Waters' debut novel, Tipping the Velvet was highly acclaimed and was chosen by The New York Times and The Library Journal as one of the best books of 1998. Reviewers have offered the most praise for Tipping the Velvet's use of humour, adventure, and sexual explicitness. The novel was adapted into a somewhat controversial three-part series of the same name produced and broadcast by the BBC in 2002.

What a wonderful collection! Each story is like a little treasure just waiting to be unwrapped, bringing its own unique and engaging perspective to the Austen mythos. A real treat for Jane Austen fans.
--Syrie James, bestselling author of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen and Dracula, My Love

Dancing with Mr. Darcy is a sterling collection of short stories inspired by beloved novelist Jane Austen and Chawton House, her longtime home. Edited by Sarah Waters, a bestselling author shortlisted for Great Britain's Booker Prize, this exceptional anthology features the winning entries in the Jane Austen Short Story Award 2009, a literary competition which celebrates the bicentenary of Jane Austen's arrival in the village of Chawton, where she spent the most productive years of her writing life. Any reader who's been captivated by Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, or the other unforgettable excursions into Austen's literary world will find Dancing with Mr. Darcy an unparalleled delight.

The rise of neo-liberal globalisation has posed major challenges for all European countries, identifying itself as the key political tension of the coming era. Yet, it is in France that globalisation has produced the deepest tensions, and it is here that it has generated its greatest political resistance.

The author pursues two separate lines of enquiry. First, she considers the influence of French political tradition and an enduring legacy of republicanism in shaping contemporary opposition. If globalisation poses a greater ideological threat in France than elsewhere, this is because it comes into conflict with the foundational values and symbols of the FrenchRepublic. Secondly, she examines contemporary French opposition as a site for political and ideological renewal. Many critics now agree that it is within this emergent movement, rather than within traditional parties, that new forms of political practice and ideology are being invented.

This book examines the phenomenon of work suicides in France and asks why, at the present historical juncture, conditions of work can push individuals to take their own lives. During the 2000s, France experienced what commentators have described as a 'suicide epidemic', whereby increasing numbers of workers in the face of extreme pressures of work, chose to kill themselves. The book analyses a corpus of testimonial material linked to 66 suicide cases across three large French companies during the period from 2005 to 2015. It aims to consider what the extreme and subjective act of self-killing, narrated in suicide letters, can tell us about the contemporary economic order and its impact on flesh and blood bodies. What do rising work-related suicides reveal about conditions of human labour in the twenty-first century? Does neoliberal economics condition a desire for suicide? How do suicidal individuals describe the causes and motivations of their act? Combining critical perspectives from sociology, history, testimony studies, economics, cultural studies and public health, the book raises critical questions about the human costs of the shift to a finance-driven neoliberal order and its everyday effects within the French workplace.

This book examines the phenomenon of work suicides in France and asks why, at the present historical juncture, conditions of work can push individuals to take their own lives. During the 2000s, France experienced what commentators have described as a 'suicide epidemic', whereby increasing numbers of workers in the face of extreme pressures of work, chose to kill themselves. The book analyses a corpus of testimonial material linked to 66 suicide cases across three large French companies during the period from 2005 to 2015. It aims to consider what the extreme and subjective act of self-killing, narrated in suicide letters, can tell us about the contemporary economic order and its impact on flesh and blood bodies. What do rising work-related suicides reveal about conditions of human labour in the twenty-first century? Does neoliberal economics condition a desire for suicide? How do suicidal individuals describe the causes and motivations of their act? Combining critical perspectives from sociology, history, testimony studies, economics, cultural studies and public health, the book raises critical questions about the human costs of the shift to a finance-driven neoliberal order and its everyday effects within the French workplace.