Sarah Waters

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.

'Piercing 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 set in the 'roaring' 1890s, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King on her journey from Whitstable oyster-girl to music-hall star to cross-dressing rentboy to East End 'tom'.

Book Information: Nan is captivated by the music hall phenomenon that is 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 start 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. Author Information: Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a PhD in English Literature and has published articles on lesbian and gay writing and cultural history. She has worked in bookshops and libraries and has taught for the Open University, though has given up full-time academic work in order to concentrate on writing fiction. She is currently working on her third novel.

An eerie and utterly compelling novel of mystery and seduction set in a women's prison in Victorian London.

"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.

Now a major motion picture directed by Lenny Abrahamson and starring Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Wilson. "Several sleepless nights are guaranteed."--Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners--mother, son, and daughter--are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. 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 intimately entwined with his.

" 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.

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 na ve 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.

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 s ance 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."

"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.