The Paying Guests

'A page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London on the verge of great change' - Guardian. 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. 'You will be hooked within a page' - Charlotte Mendelson, Financial Times. 'Sumptuous... the writing is impeccable. A joy in every respect' - New Statesman. 'An unsurpassed fictional recorder of vanished eras and hidden lives' - Sunday Times.