Manilla Press, an imprint of Bonnier Books UK, has acquired Service by Lauren Mooney, a working-class writer based in South London, in a two-book pre-emptive deal.
Commissioning Editor Zoe Yang acquired World All Language rights from Veronique Baxter at David Higham Associates. Service is a contemporary ghost story about class, precarity and time and will be published in June 2026.
Danielle MacKinnon’s nearly thirty and still hasn’t got her life sorted. Her job as a PA to the blithely privileged Jeannie is boring and existentially depressing, and after a break-up, she has nowhere to live for the next two months. She’s broke, burning through couches and good-will, until she gets an unexpected proposal from Jeannie. Danielle can stay at Westerley, the sprawling Yorkshire estate where Jeannie grew up.
Danielle luxuriates in her idyllic, borrowed life as lady of the manor, but Westerley is a strange place, old and uneasy. The sleep paralysis that began in London is beginning to worsen. Then Jeannie arrives unannounced.
Working for her, serving her, living in her house, the razor-thin boundaries between Danielle and her boss begin to dissolve; soon their relationship slides into something 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?
Mooney said: ‘Service is a story about work, and class, and knowing your place. It’s a story I’ve been trying to tell for a long time. I grew up hearing about relatives who’d been servants, and as I got older, and fell in love with classic novels set in stately homes, I was in no doubt about where in those houses I would have belonged. I spent my twenties trying to work out what I thought about all this: what it means to own things and not own them; to serve and be served; what’s changed since my great grandmother grew up below stairs, and what hasn’t. I couldn’t be more grateful to my agent Veronique for finding such a brilliant home for this book, or happier that Zoe, and all the team at Bonnier, have taken a chance on Service. It’s a novel full of questions that I don’t know the answers to, and I can’t wait to get it into readers’ hands.’
Yang said: ‘I was blown away by Service – it is both a deeply necessary novel about class, work and social mobility and a wildly entertaining black comedy. Lauren Mooney is an exceptional talent and we are so excited to welcome her to the Manilla Press list.’
Service will be published by Manilla Press in hardback, eBook and audio in June 2026.
Photo by Erin Hopkins
