Sleep, Pale Sister, a powerful, atmospheric and blackly gothic evocation of Victorian artistic life, was originally published before Joanne Harris achieved worldwide recognition with Chocolat.

Henry Chester, a domineering and puritanical Victorian artist, is in search of the perfect model. In nine-year-old Effie he finds her.
Ten years later, lovely, childlike and sedated, Effie seems the ideal wife. But something inside her is about to awaken.
Drawn into a dangerous underworld of prostitution, murder and blackmail, she must finally plan her revenge.