The Affairs of Others

You see, I was no different than Hope, no less a danger to myself and others - I had given myself away, to harm, to unknown appetites - but here, in my own building, I meant to practice life differently, in my way, no one else's.
In the five years since her young husband's death, Celia Cassill has retreated from view. She has moved from one New York neighbourhood to another but she has not moved on. The owner of a small apartment building, she has chosen tenants who will not intrude upon her grief. Privacy is the byword; self-containment the aim. Everything will change when a new tenant, Hope, moves in upstairs. Intoxicating and dangerous, Hope is on the run from a failed marriage and in thrall to a seductive, sinister man. As her noisy affair destroys the building's quiet, and another tenant disappears, Celia is forced into contact with life - complicated, messy, irrepressible life - through violence, sex, and the secrets that lurk within the brownstone's walls.