Ever since she made her debut foray into the literary world with 1998’s Tipping the Velvet (made into a steamy BBC drama starring Keeley Hawes) Sarah Waters has dipped her toes into the murky, passionate and often chilling past of her characters and settings. As a child in Wales, Waters was a big fan of ghost stories and that fascination reached its peak with the penning of Affinity, the sinister tale of Selina Dawes, an otherworldly, incarcerated medium and the woman who comes to comfort her in prison. Her latest spooky affair is The Little Stranger in which Britain is on the cusp of change (a new Labour government has been elected in the uncertain post-WW2 times) and the Ayres family of Hundreds Hall are about to be disturbed by a series of unexplainable events involving angry dogs, odd markings on walls and bells chiming for no apparent reason. Do not read alone.

Waterstone’s, Edinburgh, Tue 13 Apr.