Waters, Sarah: The Paying Guests

It is 1922, and in a hushed south London villa life is about to be transformed, as genteel widow Mrs Wray and her discontented daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers. Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the ‘clerk class‘, bring with them gramophone music, colour, fun - and dangerous desires. The most ordinary of lives, it seems, can explode into passion and drama . . . A love story that is also a crime story, this is vintage Sarah Waters. ‘Another wild ride of a novel . . . magnetic storytelling‘ Tracy Chevalier, Observer ‘Sumptuous . . . the writing is impeccable. A joy in every respect‘ Lionel Shriver, New Statesman ‘You will be hooked within a page . . . the apotheosis of her talent . . . I have tried and failed to find a single negative thing about it‘ - Charlotte Mendelson, Financial Times ‘An unsurpassed fictional recorder of vanished eras and hidden lives‘ - Peter Kemp, Sunday Times A New York Times Notable Book of the Year