The book that inspired Park Chan-wook's astonishing film The Handmaiden.

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize

London 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, who was born in Wales, has been described as 'one of the best storytellers alive today' (Matt Thorne, Independent), and there can be no doubt that readers and critics alike have been gripped by her extraordinary imagination. Sarah Waters' first novel, Tipping the Velvet, won a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her next novel, Affinity, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award while Fingersmith and The Night Watch were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The former also won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for Literature. The Little Stranger was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and The Paying Guests was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize in 2015. Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith and The Night Watch have all been adapted for television, The Little Stranger was adapted as a film by Lenny Abrahamson, and Fingersmith inspired Park Chan-wook's film, The Handmaiden. Sarah Waters has been named Author of the Year five times: by the British Book Awards, The Booksellers' Association, Waterstone's Booksellers, Glamour Magazine Awards and the Stonewall Awards. In 2019 she was awarded an OBE for services to literature.