Affinity: A Novel

London Times Novelist of the Year
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize: Finalist

A spellbinding ghost story, a complex and intriguing historical mystery, and a poignant romance with an enexpected twist.

An upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, Margaret Prior 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 tale that will leave readers "transfixed with horror and excitement" (Daily Mail, London), Affinity, in its accomplishment and sophistication, leaves no doubt as to this writer's considerable gifts.

"Her first, Tipping the Velvet, was good; her second is just terrific....Affinity is two parts Wilkie Collins...and just a dash of Jeanette Winterson for up-to-the-minute lesbian-historical-fiction flavor." New York Magazine

"There are two kinds of mystery novels. The first gives us the crime and the clues....In the other, the crime is solved but not the mystery, which arises from a dark corner of the human condition....Affinity is both of these — and also a wrenching love story." Nancy Willard, New York Times Book Review

"Readers must seek the answers in Affinity, which turns into a powerful plot-twister. The book is multidimensional: a naturalistic look at Victorian society; a truly suspenseful tale of terror; and a piece of elegant, thinly veiled erotica." USA Today

"Waters has perfect pitch in her representations of bourgeois Victorian life, the puritanical misery of prisons in the 1870's, and the spiritualist subculture...she has created a compelling character in a deeply absorbing book." Nancy Chinn, The Advocate

"Waters has concocted a delicious mix of mysticism and dark romance set in Victorian England." Booklist

"A darkly homoerotic tale of specters and spinsters, frustrated ambition, and (yes!) mannish wardens." Out Magazine

An upper-class woman, recovering from a suicide attempt, visits the women's ward of Millbank prison as part of her rehabilitation. There she meets Selina, an enigmatic spiritualist-and becomes 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.

"Unfolds sinuously and ominously...a powerful plot-twister. The book is multidimensional: a naturalistic look at Victorian society; a truly suspenseful tale of terror; and a piece of elegant, thinly veiled erotica." (USA Today)

"Gothic tale, psychological study, puzzle narrative-Sarah Waters' second novel is all of these wrapped into one, served up to superbly suspenseful and hypnotic effect." (The Seattle Times)

A pulse-quickening read by the author of "Tipping the Velvet, Affinity" is a sophisticated and spine-tingling historical mystery awash with the sights, scenes, and smells of 19th-century London. This spellbinding ghost story has left British reviewers "transfixed with horror and excitement" ("Daily Mail, " London).

Sarah Waters is the author of Tipping the Velvet.