By Katie Roiphe
352 pages; Dial

Habitually deceptive Katherine Mansfield and seductively needy John Middleton Murray. Philandering H.G. Wells, his supernaturally placid wife, Jane, and his masterful mistress Rebecca West. Clive Bell, Virginia Woolf, and their mutual fascination with Woolf's sister, Bell's wife, Vanessa. Literary London between the wars bristled with sexually explosive, self-consciously offbeat relationships. Katie Roiphe's frankly curious Uncommon Arrangements (Dial) proves that even the most secretive marriage can be an open book.

— Cathleen Medwick