America's First Families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, This reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and others who tend to the needs of the President and First Family....

"It's hard to find an employer who doesn't ask too many questions about my past. So I thank my lucky stars that the Garricks miraculously give me a job, cleaning their stunning penthouse with views across the city and preparing fancy meals in their shiny kitchen. I can work here for a while, stay quiet until I get what I want. It's almost perfect. But I still haven't met Mrs Garrick, or seen inside the guest bedroom. I'm sure I hear her crying. I...

The Great War rages across Europe, and not even the serene Yorkshire countryside is free from its effects. The men and women of Downton are doing their part: heir Matthew Crawley and footman Thomas Barrow are off fighting, while Lady Grantham and Isobel Crawley are squabbling over whether Downton should be used as a hospital. Lady Mary is seeing a wealthy newspaper magnate while Lady Edith becomes much warmer and Lady Sybil seeks to ingratiate herself...

"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...

"The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, carefully pieced together at the heart and hearth of the ancestral home of the Crawleys, takes readers deeper into the story of every important member of the Downton estate.This lavish, entirely new book focuses on each character individually, examining their motivations, their actions, and the inspirations behind them."--

Set in England on the cusp of World War II, the final film by Ernst Lubitsch is a zany comedy of manners that sends up British class hierarchy with his famously light touch. Cluny Brown is an irrepressible heroine with a zeal for plumbing. Sent to work as a parlormaid at a stuffy country manor, she proceeds to turn the household upside down with plenty of help from Adam Belinski, an eccentric Continental exile who has fled the Nazis but is still worried...