One man's hatred sets off a community crisis in a chilling page-turning read that is also startlingly inspirational. Textile magnate G. R. Logan lays off a thirty-year employee who dies weeks later, and the man's son means to make Logan pay. In her second novel in the dramatic Baxter series, Kathy Herman unleashes a kidnapper's unresolved anger and explores the honest depths of a believer's anger at God. Sinister messages threaten the lives of two...

"The epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality in the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism. Sven Beckert's rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world's most significant manufacturing industry combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world. Here...

"Daughtie Winfield is outspoken in her support for the rights of others, from the mill girls threatening a strike over pitiful working conditions to the immigrants living on the other side of town. So she is unprepared for the hostility aroused by her growing friendship with Liam Donohue, an Irish artisan. As dissension and upheaval threaten the textile industry, Daughtie longs for peace - in her work and within her heart" -- from the publisher.

Her luminous first novel, Moon Women, won the hearts of both readers and critics, who called it “richly textured...a pleasure to be savored by a writer to watch.” (Kirkus Reviews) Now Pamela Duncan returns to the rich landscape of the human heart with a lush, resonant novel about mothers and daughters, about family and friendship, about a woman at a turning point in her life and the extraordinary world she discovers in a...

"The Fruit of the Tree," sheds light on a highly controversial topic: labor conditions and factory reform. This, in combination with a love story and the ethical debate over euthanasia, made for mixed, positive reviews upon its publication. Conflicts abound in this turn-of-the century tale of love, ethical dilemma and class division.

Young and recently widowed, Jasmine Houston confronts the vital issues of freedom and slavery, love and hate, life and death. As Jasmine's opposition to slavery grows and her friendship with her bachelor brother-in-law Nolan deepens, her Massachusetts horse farm soon becomes a stop for the Underground Railroad. With both her mother and mammy dying, she and her young son rush to the family plantation in Mississippi--escorted by Nolan. Keeping a death-bed...

An "enjoyable" history of the French cosmetic industry and the evolution of beauty standards and commercial culture during a revolutionary era (European History Quarterly).
As the French citizenry rebelled against the excesses of the aristocracy, there was a parallel shift in consumer beauty practices. Powdered wigs, alabaster white skin, and rouged cheeks disappeared in favor of a more natural and simple style.
Selling Beauty challenges...

Interweaves historical fact with fiction to explore the mystery behind the creation of the remarkable Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, woven at the end of the fifteenth century, which today hang in the Cluny Museum in Paris.

No journalist has ever been allowed into the ultrasecretive, highly pressured process of originating a perfume. But Chandler Burr, the New York Times perfume critic, spent a year behind the scenes observing the creation of two major fragrances. Now, writing with wit and elegance, he juxtaposes the stories of the perfumes--one created by a Frenchman in Paris for an exclusive luxury-goods house, the other made in New York by actress Sarah Jessica Parker...