Books about Seamstress from Amazon.com

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, the two friends find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined..
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"From its opening pages, in which she recounts her own premature birth, triggered by terrifying rumors of an incipient pogrom, Bernstein's tale is clearly not a typical memoir of the Holocaust. She was born into a large family in rural Romania...and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father's orders to turn down a scholarship that took her to Bucharest, and got herself expelled from that school when she responded to a priest/teacher's vicious diatribe against the Jews by hurling a bottle of ink at him...After a series of incidents that ranged from dramatic escapes to a year in a forced labor detachment, Sara ended up in Ravensbruck, a women's concentration camp, [and] managed to survive...she tells this story with style and power." -Kirkus Reviews

"There are many recent accounts of Holocaust victims, but this work stands alone as a testimony to personal strength and an independent spirit." -Library Journal

"Extraordinary." -Booklist

"An engrossing history lesson as well as an important archive." -Faye Kellerman
"Well-told...deserves a prominent place in the archive of Holocaust survival stories." -Publishers Weekly

"One of the best of the recent wave of Holocaust memoirs" (Kirkus Reviews)

--An ALA choice for the Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, and the second-place winner in the General Trade Nonfiction category at the New York Book Show
--Includes an introduction by Edgar M. Bronfman
--Written by a strong woman with a colorful and unusual story to tell, this book is a standout in a popular subgenre of the memoir form.
Price: $5.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As seamstresses, the young sisters Emília and Luzia dos Santos know how to cut, how to mend, and how to conceal These are useful skills in the lawless backcountry of Brazil, where ruthless land barons called "colonels" feud with bands of outlaw cangaceiros, trapping innocent residents in the cross fire.

Emília, whose knowledge of the world comes from fashion magazines and romance novels, dreams of falling in love with a gentleman and escaping to a big city.

Luzia also longs to escape their little town, where residents view her with suspicion and pity. Scarred by a childhood accident that left her with a deformed arm, the quick-tempered Luzia finds her escape in sewing and in secret prayers to the saints she believes once saved her life.

But when Luzia is abducted by a group of cangaceiros led by the infamous Hawk, the sisters' quiet lives diverge in ways they never imagined. Emília stumbles into marriage with Degas Coelho, the son of a doctor whose wealth is rivaled only by his political power.

She moves to the sprawling seaside city of Recife, where the glamour of her new life is soon overshadowed by heartache and loneliness. Luzia, forced to trek through scrubland and endure a nomadic existence, proves her determination to survive and begins to see the cangaceiros as comrades, not criminals.

In Recife, Emília must hide any connection to her increasingly notorious sister. As she learns to navigate the treacherous waters of Brazilian high society, Emília sees the country split apart after a bitter presidential election. Political feuds extend to the countryside, where Luzia and the Hawk are forced to make unexpected alliances and endure betrayals that threaten to break the cangaceiros apart. But Luzia will overcome time and distance to entrust her sister with a great secret—one Emília vows to keep. And when Luzia's life is threatened, Emília will risk everything to save her.

An enthralling novel of love and courage, loyalty and adventure, that brings to life a faraway time and place, The Seamstress is impeccably drawn, rich in depth and vision, and heralds the arrival of a supremely talented new writer.

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Price: $3.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Seven with one blow!" Well, that's quite a brave little seamstress, isn't it? To characterize Mary Pope Osborne and Giselle Potter's fairy tale as a mere Grimm Brothers' rehash is to miss the point entirely Although the pair has repurposed Grimm's The Brave Little Tailor to more feminist ends, they've hung onto the story's most grisly details while seamlessly slipping in a plucky heroine to brilliant effect.

As in Grimm, the action begins when our sweet seamster takes down a passel of houseflies with a well-aimed swat. She then commemorates that action in delicate embroidered script on her walking coat. ("Seven with one blow!") Buoyed by confidence and cleverness, the seamstress then almost accidentally makes short work of a giant, then two giants, then a unicorn, and even a wild boar, all just by "following her nose."

"'Amazing!' the king exclaimed. 'Could you possibly do just one more thing for my kingdom?' The little seamstress sighed. She'd begun to fear the king was taking advantage of her helpful nature."

But not to worry; despite her good nature, this seamstress is much too smart to be taken advantage of by such a clumsy king. Potter's thoughtful, funny work in ink and animated gouache complements Osborne to a tee, with segues and interludes nothing short of genius. The big payoff comes when our girl becomes a legend: "Out of a seamstress a great queen was made, as kind and wise as she was strong and brave." (Ages 4 to 8) --Paul Hughes.
Price: $3.28 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Based on the author's grandmother's life story, this breakout novel from an acclaimed writer tells of a young woman who flees west in hopes of a second chance at life, only to find it complicated by the family she thought she left behind.

"I couldn't cook but I could sew. It would have been better the other way around." So explains Nell Plat, who, at age seventeen, finds herself unhappily married and the mother of two baby girls. For a young woman with a hunger for excitement and glamour, Kansas circa 1900 offers nothing but a flat horizon. She finds joy in sewing and making dresses for women in town. Soon she begins to entertain ambitions she knows she cannot share.

The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard is the story of what happens when Nell runs away to Los Angeles in the year 1901 as the new motion-picture
industry is just taking root. Nell marries again, has a daughter, and goes into business in Hollywood as a costumer to the stars. But an unexpected knock on the door threatens to take apart the life Nell has so carefully built.

Through the alchemy of art, Erin McGraw has deeply reimagined her own grandmother's story. She has also drawn on the tart and poignant voices of prairie women who lived in the late nineteenth century, etching a journey that will resonate with fans of classic novels of the American West..
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Second in the swashbuckling Musketeers mystery series.

Aramis's lover-a Spanish noblewoman and childhood friend of the Queen-has been murdered, and the Musketeer has been accused of the crime. Now it's up to Athos, Porthos, and D'Artagnan to clear their friend's name..
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Winner of the 2002 Berkshire Prize, presented by the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians

Fabricating Women examines the social institution of the seamstresses’ guild in France from the time of Louis XIV to the Revolution In contrast with previous scholarship on women and gender in the early modern period, Clare Haru Crowston asserts that the rise of the absolute state, with its centralizing and unifying tendencies, could actually increase women’s economic, social, and legal opportunities and allow them to thrive in corporate organizations such as the guild. Yet Crowston also reveals paradoxical consequences of the guild’s success, such as how its growing membership and visibility ultimately fostered an essentialized femininity that was tied to fashion and appearances.
Situating the seamstresses’ guild as both an economic and political institution, Crowston explores in particular its relationship with the all-male tailors’ guild, which had dominated the clothing fabrication trade in France until women challenged this monopoly during the seventeenth century. Combining archival evidence with visual images, technical literature, philosophical treatises, and fashion journals, she also investigates the techniques the seamstresses used to make and sell clothing, how the garments reflected and shaped modern conceptions of femininity, and guild officials’ interactions with royal and municipal authorities. Finally, by offering a revealing portrait of these women’s private lives—explaining, for instance, how many seamstresses went beyond traditional female boundaries by choosing to remain single and establish their own households—Crowston challenges existing ideas about women’s work and family in early modern Europe.
Although clothing lay at the heart of French economic production, social distinction, and cultural identity, Fabricating Women is the first book to investigate this immense and archetypal female guild in depth. It will be welcomed by students and scholars of French and European history, women’s and labor history, fashion and technology, and early modern political economy.
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