Award-winning Welsh author Sarah Waters knows how to keep her readers turning the pages of her delightfully salacious novels — and she has fun doing it. She has authored six books: “Tipping the Velvet,” “Affinity,” “Fingersmith,” “The Night Watch,” “The Little Stranger,” and “The Paying Guests.”

Her first three novels are known for their lesbian protagonists set amidst Victorian Society. Her debut novel, “Tipping the Velvet,” which is itself Victorian slang for a certain act, won a 1999 Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It has been translated into at least 24 languages and was adapted into a successful three-part television serial for BBC Two.

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Waters’ second novel, “Affinity,” was set during the Spiritualism movement of the Victorian Era and won the Stonewall Book Award and Somerset Maugham Award.

With the release of “Fingersmith,” Waters hit her stride and appealed to an even larger audience, including David Bowie, who dubbed it one of his “top 100 books.”

“Pornography, baby-farming, childhood trauma, the asylum racket . . . the subjects are grave ones, but, oh, what fun I had. That’s what I recall most clearly of the writing process: the glee, the diabolical delight, the speed and blissful intensity with which I worked,” Waters wrote in a piece for The Guardian about “Fingersmith” on its 20th anniversary.

The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and adapted for BBC One as another successful serial.

“The Night Watch” followed and sees Waters moving her work into the 1940s. Of her novels, it took the longest for the author to write at four years. It was also adapted for television by BBC Two. “The Little Stranger” keeps the 1940s setting but differs from Waters’ other writings as it turns into a ghost story. “The Paying Guests” takes readers to the 1920s and explores a developing lesbian relationship — and then a murder investigation.

Prior to becoming a full time novelist, Waters worked as an academic, earning a doctorate and teaching. Her doctoral dissertation, “Wolfskins and togas: lesbian and gay historical fictions, 1870 to the present” is included with her non-fiction works, along with “A Girton Girl on a Throne: Queen Christina and Versions of Lesbianism, 1906-1933" and "The Most Famous Fairy in History: Antinous and Homosexual Fantasy."

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