Service

Sue Maybourne has led a quiet life, and that's how it seems set to continue. But how wrong can someone be about personal destiny! It's typical of her that, when a car crashes in front of her as she is on her way home from work, she unhesitatingly goes to help the victims. Luckily a stranger soon appears to assist her in rescuing the injured passengers from the wreckage. But is he a stranger? Why does he seem so familiar - and fascinating? Within a few days this handsome young man has introduced Sue to the Service, an unworldly force for good that wants her as a recruit. The responsibilities she is expected to take on are daunting and immense, but little does she realise that they pale into insignificance beside the ultimate fate the Service intends for her. Meanwhile, a series of events apparently unconnected with Sue's great adventure is taking place in deepest Devon. Preparing to settle into a new job teaching in a rural primary school, Stephen Harcourt is looking for a house that won't require too much work. Why, then, is he eerily attracted to a tumbledown farmhouse in urgent need of repair and modernisation? A magnetic force seems to be acting on him, and it seems to emanate from an ancient stone well in the garden. Without knowing quite why, he buys the house and begins researching the history of the well. When, with the aid of a colleague with Cambridge connections, he sends samples of the stone for dating, he gets the shock of his life. Either something supernatural is at work, or the entire history of mankind will have to be rewritten. The gradual interweaving of these two stories makes for an epic fantasy. A gripping yarn in its own right, the tale has moral, spiritual and allegorical dimensions that place it in the grand tradition of GK Chesterton and CS Lewis. Evocative, exciting and profoundly moving, The Service is an unforgettable read.