The extraordinary bestselling author, who wrote three astonishing Victorian novels before moving to the 1940s with The Night Watch and The Little Stranger, now turns to the 1920s.
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
Waters is not simply one of our best historical novelists, but one of our best novelists . . . sooner or later, she's going to be given the Booker. If you haven't already, start reading her now, and be one step ahead of the crowd
