1. Book: The Paying Guests; Author: Sarah Waters; Publisher: Hachette; Pages: 566; Price: Rs. 599

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work are demanding change. And in a genteel house in the south of the city, its inhabitants still recovering from the devastating losses of the First World War, life is about to be transformed.

Widowed Mrs. Wray and her daughter, Frances - an unmarried woman with an interesting past, now on her way to becoming a spinster - find themselves obliged to take in lodgers.

The arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a young couple of the "clerk class", brings with it gramophone music, colour and fun.

Open doors offer Frances glimpses of the newcomers' habits, and the staircase and landing have never seemed to her so busy.

As she and Lilian are drawn into an unexpected friendship, loyalties begin to shift. Secrets are confessed, dangerous desires admitted; the most ordinary of lives, it seems, can explode into passion and drama.

A love story, this is also a crime story.

2. Book: The Final Report; Author: Monabi Mitra; Publisher: Penguin; Pages: 246; Price: Rs. 199

When a young girl falls to her death from the Mission Row Police Housing Complex, home to DSP Bikram Chatterjee, the Crime Branch goes into a tizzy.

Who is she? Is it murder or suicide? And, most importantly, how did she manage to climb up to the roof without being noticed?

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Balancing crime, spirituality and mental health (Books This Weekend)