Service by Lauren Mooney

Service by Lauren Mooney

'Funny, bleak, delicious, totally terrifying. I could not put it down' Ella Risbridger

'An acerbically witty and haunting state of the times debut' Charlotte Paradise

Danielle MacKinnon's nearly thirty and still hasn't got her life sorted. She's broke, hates her job as PA to the blithely privileged Jeannie, and now a break-up's left her with nowhere to live. It comes as a surprise when Jeannie suggests that Danielle stay at Westerley, the sprawling Yorkshire estate where she grew up. They need someone to look after the place anyway.

Danielle enjoys the borrowed luxury at first, but the house is strange, uneasy. The sleep paralysis that started in London has followed her there. Then Jeannie arrives unannounced.

Working for Jeannie, serving her, living in her house, the razor-thin boundaries between Danielle and her boss begin to dissolve. Soon their relationship slides into one that is older, stranger and harder to name.

Something is happening at Westerley. Things where they shouldn't be. The shadow of a maid sweeping in the dawn light. But is the house really haunted? Or is Danielle?

Switchblade-sharp fiction for the work-life unbalancedAn ingenious melding of nightmares. Trapped in a city you can't afford, trapped in a haunted manor that isn't yours. Mooney's hilarious novel asks - which is scarier? * Glen James Brown, author of Ironopolis and Mother Naked *

Service is everything I like to read about - London, supermarkets, big houses, class war, yearning, ghosts - in one single book. Funny, bleak, delicious, totally terrifying. I could not put it down. And then I could not turn off the light. I loved it.

* Ella Risbridger, author of In Love with Love *
An acerbically witty and haunting state of the times debut. For fans of Daphne Du Maurier who like their Gothic novel with a twist of biting comedy. * Charlotte Paradise, author of Overspill *
This novel completely captivated me. It depicts the horrors of 2020 Zoom calls combined with early 19th century servitude, showing that the nature of work hasn't changed as much as we'd like to pretend. * Tasha Coryell, author of Matchmaking for Psychopaths *
Less 'noblesse oblige' and more 'noblesse takes the piss'. 'Service' is the anti-Downton Abbey. It takes the glitz and the glamour out of grand country houses and the parasitic upper class that haunt them. Deference is dead. * Charlotte Vassell, author of The Other Half *

Lauren Mooney is a writer from the East Midlands. She works in theatre and audio drama, and has co-run Kandinsky Theatre Company since 2015, making award-winning shows across the UK and Europe. She is a graduate of UEA's Creative Writing Prose MA, where she held the David Higham Scholarship. She lives in south London with her husband Stewart and their tortoise, Sacher Tort. Service is her first novel.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781786586285
ISBN 10	1786586282
Title	Service
Author	Lauren Mooney
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Bonnier Books Ltd
Year published	2026-06-25
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.