Sarah Waters

Sue Trinder is an orphan growing up among petty thieves in the house of Mrs Sucksby. In 1862 Richard Rivers, a confidence trickster, arrives with an elaborate plan to defraud a wealthy heiress, Maud Lilly. Sue is asked to help and goes to work for Maud, but she soon has doubts when a close relationship develops between the two girls. X rated, contains offensive language and explicit sex.

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline. But are the Ayres haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life?

The story of four Londoners with a past: Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war; clever, sweet Helen who harbours a painful secret; Viv, the glamour girl stubbornly loyal to her soldier lover, and; Duncan, an apparent innocent, who has his own demons to fight. Their lives and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways.

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, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.