title: A Desirable Residence: A Novel of Love and Real Estate
author: Madeleine Wickham
description: Starred Review. Chick lit superstar Wickham (<i>The Wedding Girl</i>) is in stellar form in her latest, a story of intersecting fates set in suburban London. Self-centered Liz Chambers, bored with her job and under a mountain of debt, frequently lashes out at her even-tempered husband, Jonathan, and begins an affair with wealthy realtor Marcus Witherstone, who proposes that Liz and Jonathan rent their unsold house to a young couple, Ginny and Piers Prentice, with whom Liz and Jonathan's sullen teenage daughter, Alice, strikes up an unexpected friendship. Ginny, meanwhile, pins her hopes on would-be actor Piers getting a part in a soap opera, and Jonathan is put on a pedestal by Marcus's wife, Anthea. Marcus begins regretting a shady business deal that could land him in huge trouble, and as Liz grows more delusional, Ginny becomes more worried and desperate, and Anthea more unforgiving and relentless. It all comes to a head at a party Ginny throws on the eve of Piers's big audition. A well-executed and unexpected ending caps the dizzying action and demonstrates why Wickham is so deservedly on her genre's A-list. <i>(June)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: A DESIRABLE RESIDENCE
  
    
    
    
  
  ALSO BY MADELEINE WICKHAM
  
   _Cocktails for Three_
  
   _The Gatecrasher_
  
   _Sleeping Arrangements_
  
   _The Wedding Girl_
  
   **A DESIRABLE**  
   **RESIDENCE**
  
  Madeleine Wickham
  
  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS  
  ST. MARTIN’S PRESS  
  NEW YORK
  
    
    
    
    
  
  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.  
  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
  
  A DESIRABLE RESIDENCE. Copyright © 1996 by Madeleine Wickham. All rights
  reserved.  
  Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s
  Press,  
  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
  
  [ _www.stmartins.com_](http://www.stmartins.com)
  
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  > Wickham, Madeleine.
  
  > A desirable residence / Madeleine Wickham.  
  >  p. cm.
  
  > “A Thomas Dunne Book.”
  
  > ISBN 978-0-312-15108-9
  
  > 1\. Tutors and tutoring—Fiction. 2. Adultery—Fiction.  
  > 3\. Adolescence—Fiction. 4. England—Fiction. I. Title.
  
  > PR6703.I246D47 1997
  
  > 823'.914—dc20
  
  96-35455
  
  CIP
  
  ISBN 978-0-312-56277-9
  
  Originally published in Great