"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...

"When a young married couple hire a middle-aged widow during the wife, Nora's, difficult pregnancy, they don't realize the dominating force she will become in their small family. Signora A--maid, nanny, and confidante--becomes the glue in their household, and over time, the steady and loving presence whose benign influence allows them to negotiate the complexities of married life. But the delicate fabric of the young family comes undone when Signora...

"'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...

"Welcome to the family," Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I'll soon learn that the Winchesters' secrets are far more dangerous than my own... Every day I clean the Winchesters' beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole...

Arriving at the great houses of 1920's London, fifteen-year-old Margaret's life in service was about to begin. As a kitchen maid, the lowest of the low, she entered an entirely new world; one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed, mistresses to be appeased, and even bootlaces to be ironed. Work started at 5.30 a.m. and went on until after dark. It was a far cry from her childhood on the beaches of Hove, where money and food were scarce,...

"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...

"Mother of two Liv Green barely scrapes by as a maid to make ends meet, often finding escape in a good book while daydreaming of becoming a writer herself. So she can't believe her luck when she lands a job housekeeping for her personal hero, mega-bestselling author Essie Starling, a mysterious and intimidating recluse. The last thing Liv expected was to be the only person Essie talks to, which leads to a tenuous friendship. But when Essie dies suddenly,...

A journalist describes the years she worked in low-paying domestic work under wealthy employers, contrasting the privileges of the upper-middle class to the realities of the overworked laborers supporting them.