A literal-minded housekeeper causes chaos in the Rogers household when she attempts to make sense of some instructions.

"WANTED: Bloodmaid of exceptional taste. Must have a keen proclivity for life's finer pleasures. Girls of weak will need not apply. A young woman is drawn into the upper echelons of a society where blood is power in this dark and enthralling gothic novel from the author of The Year of the Witching. Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation is all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real...

"'You must be our new neighbors!' Mrs. Lowell gushes and waves across the picket fence. I clutch my daughter's hand and smile back : but the second Mrs. Lowell sees my husband a strange expression crosses her face. In that moment I make a promise. We finally have a family home. My past is far, far behind us. And I'll do anything to keep it that way... I used to clean other people's houses -- now, I can't believe this home is actually mine. The charming...

Exploited by the white family that took him in as a servant fifteen years earlier, groundskeeper August Sitwell becomes tragically enraged by how his employers mindlessly profit from the talents of a hired Black cook.

As Felicia and her mother walk past large, expensive houses on the way to the house where her mother cleans, her mother reminds her of how she should behave in someone else's home, and of the ways in which people's lives differ.

During the Great Irish Famine, sixteen-year-old scullery maid Nell falls in love with the wealthy landlord's nephew.