Publisher details

Author: Sarah Waters
Publisher: Hachette
Genre: Historical Fiction
Released: 28 August, 2014

The Paying Guests

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Synopsis

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.For with the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the 'clerk class', the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.This is vintage Sarah Waters: beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises. It is above all a wonderful, compelling story. ‘As in every Waters novel you will be hooked within a page . . .The Paying Guests is the apotheosis of her talent; at least for now. I have tried and failed to find a single negative thing to say about it.’ Charlotte Mendelson, Financial Times‘Absolutely brilliant’ Jacqueline Wilson, Sunday Times‘A lot of work must have gone into writing this novel but it is no labour at all to devour’ Lionel Shriver, New Statesman‘Brilliantly involving . . . juicy, beautifully observed’ Metro‘A stay-up-all-night page-turner’ Glamour‘Masterly . . . Waters is a cracking storyteller’ Tatler

About the author

Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and has been an associate lecturer with the Open University.She has written six novels: Tipping the Velvet (1998), which won the Betty Trask Award; Affinity (1999), which won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday / John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; Fingersmith (2002), which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, and won the South Bank Show Award for Literature and the CWA Historical Dagger; The Night Watch (2006), which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize; The Little Stranger (2009), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the South Bank Show Literature Award. The Paying Guests is her latest novel, released in 2014.She was included in Granta's prestigious list of 'Best of Young British Novelists 2003', and in the same year was voted Author of the Year by both publishers and booksellers at the British Book Awards and the BA Conference, and won the Waterstone's Author of the Year Award.Adaptations include Tipping the Velvet (multi award winning, BAFTA nominated) by Sally Head Productions for BBC; Fingersmith (BAFTA nominated) by Sally Head Productions for BBC; Affinity (several awards worldwide) by Box TV for ITV; The Night Watch for BBC. The Little Stranger is in development as a feature film with Potboiler Productions, adapted by Lucinda Coxon and to be directed by Lennie Abrahamson.Stage adaptations of Tipping The Velvet (written by Laura Wade, to be directed by Lindsay Turner for Lyric Theatre/Edinburgh Lyceum) and Fingersmith (written by Alexa Junge, to be directed by Bill Rauch for The Oregon Shakespeare Festival) are to be presented in 2015.