# The Paying Guests

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/sarah-waters/the-paying-guests/9780349004594

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![The Paying Guests](https://quivercdn.com/covers/virago/sarah-waters/the-paying-guests_978-03-4900-459-4.jpg?v=2026-05-01%2009%3A56%3A05)

- Book: [The Paying Guests](https://www.bookquiver.com/sarah-waters/the-paying-guests) ([The Paying Guests.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/sarah-waters/the-paying-guests.md))
- Authors: [Sarah Waters](https://www.bookquiver.com/sarah-waters)
- Publisher: virago
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-03-4900-459-4
- Published: 2014-08-28
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

'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