Room at the Top is a novel by John Braine, first published in the United Kingdom by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1957, about an ambitious young working-class man who juggles sexual relationships with two middle-class women in a northern town in post-war England.

Joe Lampton, demobilised at the end of the Second World War, is starting in a new job as an accountant with the Municipal Treasury in the Yorkshire market town of Warley.

He also meets Alice Aisgill, who is nine years his senior, childless, and unhappily married to a businessman who is rumoured to be having an affair with his secretary.

Joe is attracted to Susan and invites her out to the ballet, even though she is ostensibly the girlfriend of Jack Wales, a rich former RAF officer with a distinguished war record.

At the latter meeting they profess their love for each other, but Joe thinks of his triumph over Jack and the prospect of forcing Susan's father to give him a good job.

A few days later, Joe's friend Charles tells him that marrying Alice would ruin his life because she doesn't have money of her own and the scandal of a divorce would destroy his career.

After an argument, Susan submits to Joe's violent sexual advances, telling him afterwards "You won't need her anymore, will you?"

Joe hears of her death the following day and takes a bus to a nearby town where he gets drunk and has sex with a woman he meets in a pub.

A British film adaptation of the same name was made in 1958, directed by Jack Clayton and starring Laurence Harvey as Joe Lampton, Simone Signoret as Alice, and Heather Sears as Susan.