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Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
Cleaner Janice knows that it is in people's stories that you really get to know them. From recently-widowed Fiona and her son Adam; to opera-singing Geordie; and the awful Mrs 'YeahYeahYeah' and her fox terrier, Decius, Janice has a unique insight into the community around her. When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B - a shrewd and tricksy woman in her nineties - she finally meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the...
Author
Formats
Description
In Life Below Stairs, bestselling author Alison Maloney goes behind the scenes to reveal a detailed picture of what really went on 'downstairs', describing the true-life trials and tribulations of Edwardian servants in a gripping non-fiction account. Thoroughly researched and reliably informed, it also contains first-hand stories from the staff of the time. A must-read for anyone interested in the lifestyle and conduct of a bygone era.
Author
Series
Formats
Description
Imogene Hale is a lowly parlourmaid with a soul-crushing secret. Seeking solace, she takes work at a local hive, only to fall desperately in love with the amazing lady inventor the vampires are keeping in the potting shed. Genevieve Lefoux is heartsick, lonely, and French. With culture, class, and the lady herself set against the match, can Imogene and her duster overcome all odds and win Genevieve's heart, or will the vampires suck both of them dry?...
Author
Description
For fifteen years August Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job. The groundskeeper is part of the household's all-black staff, along with "Miss Mamie," the talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen apprentices - the latest orphan boys Mr. Barclay has taken in to "civilize" - boys like August. But the Barclays fortunes have fallen, and their...
Author
Description
The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking,...
Author
Pub. Date
2020
Description
"One day in the City of Lights. One night in search of lost time. Paris between the wars teems with artists, writers, and musicians, a glittering crucible of genius. But amidst the dazzling creativity of the city's most famous citizens, four regular people are each searching for something they've lost. Camille was the maid of Marcel Proust, and she has a secret: when she was asked to burn her employer's notebooks, she saved one for herself. Now she...
8) Housegirl
Author
Description
A moving and unexpectedly funny exploration of friendship and family, shame and forgiveness, Michael Donkor's debut novel follows three adolescent girls grappling with a shared experience: the joys and sorrows of growing up. Belinda knows how to follow the rules. As a housegirl, she has learned the right way to polish water glasses, to wash and fold a hundred handkerchiefs, and to keep a tight lid on memories of the village she left behind when she...
Author
Description
"Liv Green barely scrapes by to make ends meet, often finding escape in a good book. She can't believe her luck when she lands a job housekeeping for her hero, bestselling author Essie Starling. The last thing Liv expected was to be the only person Essie talks to, which leads to a tenuous friendship. When Essie passes away suddenly, Liv is astonished to learn that her dying wish was for Liv to complete her final novel. To do so, Liv will have to step...
Author
Description
After Amerley is raped by her employer's son she realizes she has two choices--stay quiet and keep her job or live her truth and speak up for herself and for justice.
Ghana. Eldest of four girls, Amerley is offered a job working for one of her mother's old school friends. She has to accept: her wages will feed her family, help her sisters stay in school, and ensure that her mother won't have to worry about them. Amerley's move to Accra isn't easy,...
12) Longbourn
Author
Pub. Date
2013.
Description
In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants' hall threatens to...
13) Otherbound
Author
Formats
Description
A seventeen-year-old boy finds that every time he closes his eyes, he's drawn into the body of a mute servant girl from another world--a world that's growing increasingly more dangerous, and where many things are not as they seem.
14) The dog
Author
Formats
Description
Distraught by a breakup with his long-term girlfriend, a young man leaves New York to take an unusual job in the strange desert metropolis of Dubai at the height of its self-invention as a futuristic Shangri-la where he struggles with his new position as the "family officer" of the capricious and very rich Batros family.
Author
Description
1890, Atlanta. Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night she moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, "Dear Miss Sweetie." When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society's ills, but she's not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race...
Author
Series
Description
"Meet the Bright Young Things, the rabble-rousing hedonists of the 1920s whose treasure hunts were a media obsession. One such game takes place at the 18th birthday party of Pamela Mitford, but ends in tragedy as cruel, charismatic Adrian Curtis is pushed to his death from the church neighbouring the Mitford home. The police quickly identify the killer as a maid, Dulcie. But Louisa Cannon, chaperone to the Mitford girls and a former criminal herself,...
17) Hemingway's girl
Author
Formats
Description
Mariella Bennet, struggling to support her family in Depression-era Key West, takes a job as a maid for Ernest Hemingway's second wife, and becomes caught up in a world of parties, celebrities, and the attentions of Papa himself.
Author
Series
Inspector and Mrs. Jeffries mysteries volume 32
Formats
Description
Orlando Edison is a stockbroker using London's infatuation with foreign mining ventures to make a fortune. He has curried favor with the nation's most respected aristocrats, even inviting three of the most influential investors in England--known as the Merry Gentlemen--to be part of his latest enterprise. Despite his mysterious past, Edison is now welcomed in the highest circles and moves with ease among the rich and powerful. Yet a few days before...
19) The hired girl
Author
Pub. Date
2015.
Description
Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself -- because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm...
Author
Series
Description
"As the Season of 1899 comes to an end, the world is poised on the brink of profound, irrevocable change. The Earl of Dilberne is facing serious financial concerns. The ripple effects spread to everyone in the household: Lord Robert, who has gambled unwisely on the stock market and seeks a place in the Cabinet; his unmarried children, Arthur, who keeps a courtesan, and Rosina, who keeps a parrot in her bedroom; Lord Robert's wife Isobel, who orders...
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