The Little Stranger [Paperback]

'A gripping story ... As well as being a supernatural tale, it is a meditation on the nature of the British and class, and how things are rarely what they seem. Chilling' Kate Mosse, The Times --Kate Mosse, The Times

'A brilliantly observed story, verging on the comedy, about Britain on the cusp of modern age ... The writing is subtle and poised' Joy lo Dico, Independent on Sunday --Joy lo Dico, Independent on Sunday

'Displaying her remarkable flair for period evocation, Waters recreates backwater Britain just after the Second World War with atmospheric immediacy ... Acute and absorbing' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times --Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

'Waters is often described as a brilliant storyteller, and so she is. But she is also an artist compelled to experiment ... Waters gives herself a sort of handicap with the dull doctor's narration. This indirectness, which in cruder hands might have led to yawning insurrection in the reader, becomes essential to the novels unsettling power' Claudia Fitzherbert, Daily Telegraph
--Claudia Fitzherbert, Daily Telegraph

`A gripping story, with beguiling characters . . . As well as being a supernatural tale, it is a meditation on the nature of the British and class, and how things are rarely what they seem. Chilling' Kate Mosse, The Times, Summer Read --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'While at one turn, the novel looks to be a ghost story, the next it is a psychological drama . . . But it is also a brilliantly observed story, verging on the comedy, about Britain on the cusp of modern age . . . The writing is subtle and poised' Joy lo Dico, Independent on Sunday --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

`Displaying her remarkable flair for period evocation, Waters recreates backwater Britain just after the Second World War with atmospheric immediacy . . . Acute and absorbing' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

* The brilliant and chilling new novel from Sarah Waters - shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2009 * 'Sarah Waters has worked a spell' GUARDIAN

`Sarah Waters' masterly novel is a perverse hymn to decay, to the corrosive power of class resentment as well as the damage wrought by war . . . (Waters has) a perfect understanding of her period . . . She deploys the vigour and cunning one finds in Margaret Atwood's fiction, the same narrative ease and expansiveness, and the same knack of twisting the tension tighter and tighter within an individual scene . . . The Little Stranger operates in the queasy borderlands between the supernatural and the psychopathological, and it is territory in which Waters moves with an air of supreme ease . . . It is gripping, confident, unnerving and supremely entertaining . . . Its allusions, its implications softly gather and fold themselves into the space in the mind that the book has made for itself, falling into place with a soft hiss, a rustle like phantom silks' Hilary Mantel, Guardian --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In 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.