title: Tipping the Velvet: A Novel
author:  Sarah Waters 
description: The heroine of Sarah Waters's audacious first novel knows her destiny, and seems content with it. Her place is in her father's seaside restaurant, shucking shellfish and stirring soup, singing all the while. "Although I didn't long believe the story told to me by Mother--that they had found me as a baby in an oyster-shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten me for lunch--for eighteen years I never doubted my own oysterish sympathies, never looked far beyond my father's kitchen for occupation, or for love." At night Nancy Astley often ventures to the nearby music hall, not that she has illusions of being more than an audience member. But the moment she spies a new male impersonator--still something of a curiosity in England circa 1888--her years of innocence come to an end and a life of transformations begins.
zlib_text: Also by Sarah Waters
  Tipping the Velvet
  Affinity
  Fingersmith
  The Night Watch
  The Little Stranger
  
  COPYRIGHT
   
  Published by Virago
   
  978-0-3490-0459-4
   
  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the
  public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or
  dead, is purely coincidental.
   
  Copyright © Sarah Waters 2014
   
  The moral right of the author has been asserted.
   
  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
  a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
  prior permission in writing of the publisher.
   
  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not
  owned by the publisher.
   
  VIRAGO PRESS
  Little, Brown Book Group
  100 Victoria Embankment
  London, EC4Y 0DY
   
  www.littlebrown.co.uk
  www.hachette.co.uk
  
  The Paying Guests
  Table of Contents
  Also by Sarah Waters
  COPYRIGHT
  Dedication
  Part One
  
  1
  
  2
  
  3
  
  4
  
  5
  
  6
  Part Two
  
  7
  
  8
  
  9
  
  10
  Part Three
  
  11
  
  12
  
  