Dear Great Book Guru,  I am looking forward to Sea Cliff’s Warm Up  on Friday night May 1.  I hear there will be restaurant specials, great street music, and  many shops will be staying open late.  For the rest of the weekend, I would like to settle down with  good book.  Any thoughts?  Swinging into Spring

Dear Swinging into Spring,  I read a very good book a few weeks ago : THE PAYING GUESTS  by Sarah Waters.  Set in London shortly after the end of World War I, this novel transforms from a 1920’s period piece, to a  sensual romance, to a crime thriller,to a murder mystery, and finally culminating in a tension packed courtroom drama – all in less than 400 pages.  “Paying guests” is a euphemism for lodgers- the Wray family have fallen on hard times and taking in  boarders is the only way they can survive.   The young couple Lily and Len Barber are slightly below the Wrays in  very class conscious British society, but then again Frances Wray is scrubbing floors in her family’s large ancestral home- the home which a short time ago  was  staffed with a cook, servants, and driver. When the two women fall in love, everything changes – romance, intrigue,  mystery, and suspense  fill the pages. In the final quarter of the book, Frances faces a huge moral dilemma that works its way out in the British court systems with an unexpected but  satisfying  resolution. Highly recommended!