Service
Workplace novel meets haunted house tale in this razor-sharp, wickedly funny debut
Will be published approx. on 25. June 2026
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-1-78658-628-5 (ISBN)
Description
'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?
'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?
Reviews / Votes
Switchblade-sharp fiction for the work-life unbalanced. An 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 * Service is so acute, and so funny, on precarity and privilege, crap jobs and crappier rentals, friendship and situationships. And then it is utterly chilling. I hardly dared put it down. * Andrew Cowan, author of Pig * If capitalism is your sleep paralysis demon too, this is the book for you. With hilarity and horror, Mooney captures the ambient anxieties and humiliation rituals of daily life for us wretched workers unable to fall upwards in today's inheritocracy. The class relations between mistress and servant play out with such a sharp uncanny truth that it sometimes feels like getting lemon juice in a papercut. * Tom Benn, author of The Doll Princess and Oxblood * Brilliantly well observed, so funny, then genuinely scary. Rebecca with better jokes. * Camilla Whitehill, writer and creator of Big Mood * For those who like their ghost stories with a side of class politics, put Service by Lauren Mooney at the top of your TBR pile. * Stylist *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bonnier Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 153 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-78658-628-5 (9781786586285)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
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.