A Series from Millennial Press

The Service Area

Six standalone near-future Ontario novels about work, dignity, and what happens to people when the systems around them get better at their lives than they are.

By Dewar Yearns · Millennial Press

The Idea

Every book is set in a different part of Ontario and a different line of work.

These are loosely related stories of a province a few years from now, set in strip malls and bungalows, arterials and lake towns. Each book asks a version of the same question from a different doorway: a furnace shop, a care worker's route, a school, a marina, a basement apartment three generations deep.

In every book the trouble is a system working exactly as designed, slowly subtracting a person from their own life. The books are short and the chapters shorter. Each is a novel you can finish in an evening.

Each book stands on its own, so start anywhere. A few details echo between them, such as a familiar-sounding service platform or a plaza that might be the same plaza, but you never need to have read another book first.

The Six Books

In reading order. Any one can be read first.

The Scarborough Line cover: a hydro corridor cutting across Scarborough.
Coming next

Book Two

The Scarborough Line

A service-business owner automates his own crew out of work, one efficiency at a time.

The Service Area Fifteen
Minutes Dewar Yearns Coming
Coming

Book Three

Fifteen Minutes

A personal support worker whose AI scheduler cuts her days into fifteen-minute billable units, and has no line item for her own mother.

The Service Area Principal
Residence Dewar Yearns Coming
Coming

Book Four

Principal Residence

Three generations in one Scarborough bungalow nobody can afford to leave. It is worth $1.4 million, and no one under its roof could buy it.

The Service Area Differentiated
Learning Dewar Yearns Coming
Coming

Book Five

Differentiated Learning

A veteran teacher against AI tutors that are genuinely good, in a system with no line item for the one adult who isn't optimizing the kids.

The Service Area Open
Water Dewar Yearns Coming
Coming

Book Six

Open Water

A lake-town store owner against the platform that's quietly turning her town into inventory, one closing date at a time.

The Author

Dewar Yearns is a pen name. The books are deadpan, warm and exact, with a dark humour that never keeps the reader at arm's length. About the author.

Millennial Press is a small Canadian imprint publishing short, literary, near-future fiction about the strip malls and bungalows of Ontario and the people who keep them running.

Be first to know when the next book lands

One email when a new Service Area book is out.

We'll only email you about new Service Area releases. Unsubscribe any time.