The Paying Guests
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Narrated by:
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Juliet Stevenson
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By:
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Sarah Waters
About this listen
From the best-selling author of The Little Stranger, an enthralling novel about a widow and her daughter who take a young couple into their home in 1920s London.
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.
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. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances' life - or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.
Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize three times, Sarah Waters has earned a reputation as one of our greatest writers of historical fiction, and here she has delivered again. A love story, a tension-filled crime story, and a beautifully atmospheric portrait of a fascinating time and place, The Paying Guests is Sarah Waters' finest achievement yet.
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Soap Opera Digest
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Critic reviews
"Awesome, full-bodied novel. 'It's like she's saying, hey dudes, this is how you do it'." (Stephen King, via Twitter)
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“A beautifully observed tale of murder, suspense, crumbling class distinctions and steamy lesbian love in post-Edwardian London. Like something Virginia Woolf might have written if she’d been racier.” (People)
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Welcome to the district nurses' home on Steeple Street, where everyone has a secret.... Ambitious young nurse Agnes Sheridan had a promising future ahead of her until a tragic mistake cost her the love and respect of everyone around her. Now she has come to Leeds for a fresh start as a trainee district nurse. But Agnes finds herself facing unexpected challenges as she is assigned to Quarry Hill, one of the city's most notorious slums.
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What a delightful story
- By Delores DeMaria on 10-17-23
By: Donna Douglas
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Life Class
- By: Pat Barker
- Narrated by: Russell Boulter
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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In the spring of 1914, a group of young students gather in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two components of a love triangle, and at the outset of the war, they turn to each other. After volunteering for the Red Cross, Paul must confront the fact that life, love, and art will never be the same for him.
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In Love and War
- By Cariola on 07-28-09
By: Pat Barker
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The Nightingale Girls
- By: Donna Douglas
- Narrated by: Penelope Freeman
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Three very different girls sign up as trainee nurses at a big London teaching hospital in 1934. Dora leaves her overcrowded, squalid working-class home for a better life. But has she got what it takes to keep up with other, better-educated girls? And will her hated stepfather ever let her go? Helen is born for the job; her brother is a doctor, her all-powerful mother a hospital trustee. But will Helen’s secret misery be her downfall? An aristocratic rebel, Millie’s carefree attitude will find her up in front of Matron again and again. Will she ever care enough to make a nurse? Or will she go back to the glamorous life she was born to?
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For young girls
- By deborah jernigan on 12-31-16
By: Donna Douglas
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Secrets of Nanreath Hall
- A Novel
- By: Alix Rickloff
- Narrated by: Lauren Irwin, Laura Waddell
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cornwall, 1940. Back in England after the harrowing evacuation at Dunkirk, WWII Red Cross nurse Anna Trenowyth is shocked to learn her adoptive parents, Graham and Prue Handley, have been killed in an air raid. She desperately needs their advice, as she's been assigned to the military hospital that has set up camp inside her biological mother's childhood home - Nanreath Hall. Anna was just six years old when her mother, Lady Katherine Trenowyth, died. All she has left are vague memories that tease her with clues she can't unravel.
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Well done both narrators and Author !
- By Andover Meadow on 09-17-16
By: Alix Rickloff
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Evergreen Falls
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A long-forgotten secret, a scandalous attraction and a place where two women's lives are changed forever. 1926: Violet Armstrong is one of the few remaining members of staff working at the grand Evergreen Spa Hotel as it closes down over winter. Only a handful of guests are left, including the heir to a rich grazing family, his sister and her suave suitor. When a snowstorm moves in, the hotel is cut off and they are all trapped. No-one could have predicted what would unfold.
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Soooo Boring
- By Merford on 10-09-19
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There'll Be Blue Skies
- By: Ellie Dean
- Narrated by: Annie Aldington
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When sixteen-year-old Sally is evacuated to the English south coast, she is terrified by what lies ahead of her. All she knows are the sights and sounds of London's East End – but Sally swallows her tears as they leave the familiar landmarks behind, knowing that she has to be a Grown-Up Girl and play mother to her six-year-old brother Ernie. Playing mother is nothing new for Sally – their real mother Florrie, a good-time girl, hasn't even come to the station to wave them off and Ernie, crippled at an early age by polio, is used to depending on his older sister.
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The audible reading was poor
- By Connie Palla on 03-02-19
By: Ellie Dean
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Laughter in the Dark
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.
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Death is often the point of life's joke
- By Darwin8u on 05-19-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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A Great Deliverance
- Inspector Lynley, Book 1
- By: Elizabeth George
- Narrated by: Donada Peters
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an ax in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry".
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good debut novel
- By Stevon on 11-11-19
By: Elizabeth George
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Death in Berlin
- By: M. M. Kaye
- Narrated by: Kate Udall
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Miranda Brand is visiting Germany for what is supposed to be a month's vacation. But from the moment that Brigadier Brindley relates the story about a fortune in lost diamonds - a story in which Miranda herself figures in an unusual way - the vacation atmosphere becomes transformed into something more ominous. And when murder strikes on the night train to Berlin, Miranda finds herself unwillingly involved in a complex chain of events that will soon throw her own life into peril.
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Why these narrators
- By Rhian on 09-01-13
By: M. M. Kaye
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Lights Out Liverpool
- By: Maureen Lee
- Narrated by: Maggie Ollerenshaw
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As Britain stands alone against a monstrous enemy, the inhabitants of Pearl Street face hardship and heartbreak with courage and humour. The war touches each of them in a different way: for Annie Poulson, a widow, it means never-ending worry when her twin boys are called up and sent to France; Sheila Reilly's husband, Cal, faces the terror of U-Boat attacks; Eileen Costello is liberated from a bitter, loveless marriage when her husband is sent to Egypt.
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Wonderful
- By Tansy Adderley on 10-03-18
By: Maureen Lee
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Incredible story
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Never question a mother’s intuition. My water isn’t supposed to break while there’s a storm raging, when my husband isn’t on the island, and as the power flickers out. Darkness covers the cabin as I cling to my belly. I never imagined it happening like this. Trained as a midwife, I know I can deliver my daughter.
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From a distinguished chronicler of American social history and political culture, An Unfinished Season captures the postwar moment of the 1950s when the modern world lay just over the horizon. In a time of rabid anticommunism, worker unrest, and government corruption, even the small-town family could not escape the nationwide suspicion and dread of "the enemy within".
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Superb novel - nicely read
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What listeners say about The Paying Guests
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- TTaylor
- 10-02-14
Juliet Stevenson is a genius
Where does The Paying Guests rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
One of the most amazing and moving performances I've ever heard. Maybe the best ever!
What did you like best about this story?
The performance
Have you listened to any of Juliet Stevenson’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
This is the best of all of them. She's masterful.
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12 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Toby
- 09-19-14
A perfect literary novel with suspense
If you could sum up The Paying Guests in three words, what would they be?
A great read.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Frances, as the protagonist, was clearly my favorite, but I also liked Lillian. Frances perhaps the most as the the voice of the novel and the one we are most intimate with as she goes about her life.
Have you listened to any of Juliet Stevenson’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Not sure as I listen to so many books. Ms. Stevenson was excellent. I will look for her again, most certainly.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
My reaction was visceral. The prose was captivating as was the sense of place and times. There was an intimacy with the character that deeply moved me.
Any additional comments?
I am telling all my friends who love to read GREAT books to read this one. Ms. Waters is a rare and exceptionally talented writer. Brava!
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- E Grant-Gibson
- 03-03-21
Brilliant Narration of an Excellent Story
Juliet Stevenson is certainly one of the great narrators of British literature. This novel by three-time Booker Prize Nominee Sarah Waters offers is glimpse into a time and place, post-WWI London, and into the lives of a group mostly of women. Suffrage, post-war trauma, women’s changing roles, economic shifts, and a loosening of social class rigidity all play a part in this ever-changing, engrossing novel. Waters is a masterful storyteller, and she reveals information piece-by-piece with a deft hand and a sharp eye. I highly recommend The Paying Guests.
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Performance
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- Ginger 3701
- 06-10-18
Once again.
Sarah Waters is such an amazing writer. Her writing puts the reader right in the middle of the story. As if one is on the sidelines watching every scene, hearing every word spoken by such wonderful characters. The mystery of it all,the feelings, the depth of emotion is simply incredible. Not one wasted word. How very rare is that?The performance was wonderful. The perfect voice for a perfect story. Perhaps the best performance I have heard. Overall fantastic.
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- Claudia Leme
- 10-14-19
Feel bad
It is very well written. You can’t let it down but it is a major downer, all the way.
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- Jess Hooks
- 04-26-20
perfect quarentine distraction
This was a perfect thing to listen to while I did housework and pass the time during lockdown. It was a nice balance of romance, politics of the time, I'm very good descriptions of London during the era.
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Performance
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- Genevieve
- 08-20-15
Not Historical Fiction
Seems as though most people are one of two minds on this - I was one that did not enjoy this being billed as historical fiction when it really should have been listed as romance. The story is very, very slow to start and doesn't get much better. The main issue, as other reviewers have written, is merely laid into the historical context, with no real commentary or perspective. The characters could have been written in a way that would have offered this perspective, but were not. It was a murder mystery without the whodunit aspect. It was a romance with real, but created drama, not the sort that naturally occurs in society and culture but manufactured by the characters. I kept waiting for a twist or some sort of resolution and did not get it.
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- ariel
- 04-30-15
Unique and satisfying
Reminiscent of a Sherlock mystery but omniscient and without lull.
Definitely recommend for bored mystery lovers.
Awesome fun. Read or
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- Anonymous User
- 05-26-15
Amazing
Another wonderful surprise by Sarah Waters. Don't miss this treat!
Love, murder, and a British accent!
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- Cainaan
- 09-23-14
Stunning
Would you listen to The Paying Guests again? Why?
Yes. Juliet Stevenson's narration was stunning, nuanced, dramatic, engrossing, and beautiful—lending even more weight to Sarah Waters' detailed and lovingly told story. The narrative itself, though slow at the beginning, grew in tension, until I was literally holding my breath to see what happens next.
What other book might you compare The Paying Guests to and why?
The Paying Guests reminded me a little of the atmosphere created by Peter Cameron in Coral Glynn, which also has terrific and taunt narration, in this case by Simon Prebble. If repression has a sound, both The Paying Guests and Coral Glynn have found it.
Which character – as performed by Juliet Stevenson – was your favorite?
I loved Stevenson's interpretation of Frances Wray—just the right amount of angst, desire and repression, but also goodness and self awareness.
If you could rename The Paying Guests, what would you call it?
I wouldn't do that. The title is perfect.
Any additional comments?
Going forward, I want all of my books to be read by Juliet Stevenson.
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33 people found this helpful