Weekend picks for book lovers

What should you read this weekend? Paste BN's picks for book lovers include Sarah Waters' sensational (in more ways than one) new period novel, The Paying Guests, and Lauren Beukes' crime novel, Broken Monsters.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters; Riverhead, 576 pp.; fiction

As Sarah Waters' delicious hothouse of a novel opens, Frances Wray and her mother are anxiously watching the ticking clock, awaiting the arrival of their new boarders.

It's 1922, and Frances and her mother, of the declining upper crust, have been forced to take in renters of the "clerk class" at their home in the London suburbs.

Enter the Barbers -- jaunty Leonard, an insurance clerk, and his voluptuous young wife, Lilian.

While Leonard goes off to work, a friendship delicately develops between "spinster" Frances, who's all of 26, and 22-year-old Lilian, as Mama Wray warily worries from downstairs. She knows that her daughter has "unnatural" impulses toward other girls.

After a long buildup, Frances and Lilian are madly kissing in the scullery, and that's just the beginning of trouble. We can't give more away, but the last third of the novel is consumed by a sensational murder trial.

Paste BN says **** out of four. "Volcanically sexy, sizzingly smart, plenty bloody and just plain irresistible."

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes; Mulholland Books, 436 pp.; fiction

Detective Gabi Versado is on the case after a series of exceptionally gruesome homicides in Detroit.

Paste BN ***1/2. "Accomplished."

Cosby: His Life and Times by Mark Whitaker; Simon & Schuster, 544 pp.; non-fiction

A biography of comedian Bill Cosby, timed to the 30th anniversary of the 1980s "must-see-TV" landmark The Cosby Show.

Paste BN says ****. "Clear-eyed, fair-minded, deftly written."

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell; Random House, 624 pp.; fiction

Holly Sykes, whom we first meet as a teenage runaway from an English village, comes to see that she is being used as a pawn by rival cabals of semi-immortal mystics.

Paste BN says *** ½. "When they arrive at the end… many readers will want to begin the journey all over again."

Liar Temptress Soldier Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott; Harper, 528 pp; fiction

True story of four fascinating women during the Civil War (on both sides), including Rose Greenhow, a Washington, D.C., socialite, secessionist, and renowned Confederate spy.

Paste BN says ****. "A revelation… compelling."

Contributing reviewers: Jocelyn McClurg, Martha T. Moore, Gene Seymour, Kevin Nance, Roberta Bernstein