The Little Stranger cover art

The Little Stranger

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Little Stranger

By: Sarah Waters
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Exclusive to download: includes an interview with Sarah Waters giving an insight into the story behind The Little Stranger.

A ghost story from one of Britain's finest and best loved writers. After her award-winning trilogy of Victorian novels, Sarah Waters turned to the 1940s and wrote The Night Watch, a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime Britain. Short-listed for both the Orange and the Man Booker, it went straight to number one in the best-seller chart.

In a dusty postwar summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand 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. 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 entwined with his.

Prepare yourself. From this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story.

2010, Orange Prize, Long-listed

2009, Man Booker Prize, Short-listed

2011, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Long-listed

2007, James Tait Black – Fiction, Short-listed

©2009 Sarah Waters (P)2009 Penguin Audio 20th Century Genre Fiction Ghosts Historical Fiction Horror Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction World War I Fiction Scary Haunted

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Bloody Chamber cover art
The Tale of Halcyon Crane cover art
The Winter Spirits cover art
The Turn of the Screw cover art
We Have Always Lived in the Castle cover art
Great Expectations cover art
The Uninvited Boxset cover art
David Copperfield cover art
The Shifting Fog [also published under the alternate title The House at Riverton] cover art
Wuthering Heights cover art
The Woman in White cover art
The Fate of Mercy Alban cover art
Strangers cover art
Cold Moon over Babylon cover art
Summer of Night cover art
Trust No One cover art

Critic reviews

Waters has determined to scare the pants off her righly devoted audience. She succeeds unequivocally. You'll want to sleep with the light on (Erica Wagner)
The Little Stranger is a proper muscle-flexing story - I was in awe and just did not want it to end (Julie Myerson)
Displaying her remarkable flair for period evocation, Waters recreates backwater Britain just after the Second World War with atmospheric immediacy . . . Acute and absorbing (Peter Kemp)
Waters is often described as a brilliant storyteller, and so she is. But she is also an artist compelled to experiment . . . Waters gives herself a sort of handicap with the dull doctor's narration. This indirectness, which in cruder hands might have led to yawning insurrection in the reader, becomes essential to the novel's unsettling power (Claudia Fitzherbert)
Truly frightening . . . As I lay in bed after finishing reading it, running the various elements through my mind, a fox screamed outside my window and I nearly had a heart attack (Suzi Feay)
A spine-tingler . . . Waters skilfully ratchets up the suspense as events at Hundreds grow ever more highly charged - even downright chilling (Amber Pearson)
All stars
Most relevant  
I found Sarah Water's ghost story send quite a few, delicious chills down my spine, and it was beautifully narrated by Simon Vance. It was easy to imagine Hundreds Hall as a place of horror and demise, and the characters surrounding it were just about perfect -all seeming suspiciously ill at ease in one way or another. I couldn't help feeling quite sorry for Dr. Faraday, who deserved better than ending tangled up in a family troubled by a haunted past. And this leads to why I felt somewhat let down at the very end -there simply was no "closure" when it was all over, not for our hero, nor for me as the listener. But overall, a very good story, which I might listen to again!

Chilling, but the end left a little to be desired

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Slightly disappointed with this book from SW. not the usual twists and does not keep you gripped. Was constantly waiting for the twist at the end but none came. Shame.

Not a usual Sarah Waters book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A great listen - perhaps a little long-winded but a great listen. I will definitely go on to give Sarah Waters' other books a try.

Another great choice

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Would you consider the audio edition of The Little Stranger to be better than the print version?

yes it is better as an audio book.

Would you ever listen to anything by Sarah Waters again?

No, i personally find Sarah Waters boring and some of her descriptions very odd.

Which scene did you most enjoy?

They're all much of the same.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

'try not to fall asleep'

BORING

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have read the book, listened to the audiobook and now I want to watch the film. This is a superb reading of a truly brilliant book.

Once again though, no-one seems to have bothered prooflistening and there is an error at chapter 9.

Audible, please listen to these books before you release them. We wouldn’t expect this in a printed book but errors keep appearing in my audiobooks.

Excellent book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Towards the end I thought the Dr was deeply irritating! So full of ‘she doesn’t know her own mind’ etc… which I don’t doubt was right for the time but irritating nonetheless.

Slightly odd / a little frustrating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
this was not as good as i expected. although the story is well narrated i felt that the story never really got going. I did listen to the end but im not sure it was worth the effort.Would be reluctant to listen to this authour again.

average

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It's so easy to get immersed in the world of this book. The characters are very well written and easy to imagine because of the depth of the description.
I first came accross this book at the British Library exhibition 'Gothic'. It was billed as an atmospheric thriller and it doesn't disappoint.
The narration is first class.

Modern Gothic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I downloaded this book months ago, but never really fancied it, only listening to it now as I'd run out of credits. However, I really enjoyed this book, it is brilliantly written with wonderful descriptions to really take you to the scene, but not too much as to make you switch off. Fantastic narration.

Brilliant.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent! So well written - as you'd expect from Sarah Waters -and the reader captures the character of the narrator exactly. A fab story - spoil yourself!

Not quite bed time reading

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews