The Paying Guests

<p><b><h3>''A page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London on the verge of great change'' <i>Guardian</i></h3></b><br><br>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.<br><br><b>''Another wild ride of a novel... magnetic storytelling'' Tracy Chevalier, <i>Observer</i></b><br><br><b>''You will be hooked within a page'' Charlotte Mendelson, <i>Financial Times</i></b><br><br><b>''Sumptuous... the writing is impeccable. A joy in every respect'' <i>New Statesman</i></b><br><br><b>''An unsurpassed fictional recorder of vanished eras and hidden lives'' <i>Sunday Ti