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