Everyone deserves a second chance at happiness... even a killer. Serendipity Fizzlestitch wants nothing more than to be left alone. In a small cabin a stone's throw from the house where her sisters and mother breathed there last, Serendipity toils away, making the dolls her late father was working on when he disappeared beneath the ocean waves. Serendipity is content to spend the rest of her existence here, trying to atone for the mistakes of her past by creating the dolls that bring joy to so many others. When a mysterious letter arrives in her fireplace, an unusual stranger shows up at her door, and her favorite mouse friend goes missing, Serendipity is forced to face the outside world--and the ghosts from her past. Will she accept the opportunity to join the most famous toymaker of all time, or will her guilt prevent her from finding the happiness everyone deserves? The Doll Maker's Daughter at Christmas is a whimsical romantic fantasy that proves everyone deserves a second chance, no matter how horrific our past. Perfect for Christmas, or any time of year, The Doll Maker's Daughter at Christmas will bring back the magic we can only find when we truly believe.

Although born into privilege, Ayna Landau marries Karl Adler in 1924 and opens the door to a world of opportunities that propel her husband's company to the height of success in the porcelain doll industry of interwar Germany. As she basks in the glory of her triumphs, her idyllic life is interrupted by Adolph Hitler's meteoric rise to power in the 1930s as head of the Nazi Party. While the chaos the Nazis create throughout Europe culminates in World War II, Ayna and her family risk everything they have worked for to secure the safety and freedom of not only their family and friends, but strangers who seek their help, as well. Struggling to survive the depths of personal tragedy that befall her by the war's end, she abandons the Adler Doll Works and their beautiful villa to flee Germany mere days ahead of the approaching Russian army, determined to be reunited with her children in Switzerland. Ayna's perseverance and resolve to restore the Adler name to the prominence it once held becomes her final mission, in an effort to bequeath its legacy to her children, grandchildren, and all future Adlers.

From Gone with the Wind to Designing Women, images of southern females that emerge from fiction and film tend to obscure the diversity of American women from below the Mason-Dixon line. In a work that deftly lays bare a myriad of myths and stereotypes while presenting true stories of ambition, grit, and endurance, Margaret Ripley Wolfe offers the first professional historical synthesis of southern women's experiences across the centuries. In telling their story, she considers many ordinary lives—those of Native-American, African-American, and white women from the Tidewater region and Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to the Gulf Coastal Plain, women whose varied economic and social circumstances resist simple explanations. Wolfe examines critical eras, outstanding personalities and groups—wives, mothers, pioneers, soldiers, suffragists, politicians, and civil rights activists—and the impact of the passage of time and the pressure of historical forces on the region's females. The historical southern woman, argues Wolfe, has operated under a number of handicaps, bearing the full weight of southern history, mythology, and legend. Added to these have been the limitations of being female in a patriarchal society and the constraining images of the "southern belle" and her mentor, the "southern lady." In addition, the specter of race has haunted all southern women. Gender is a common denominator, but according to Wolfe, it does not transcend race, class, point of view, or a host of other factors. Intrigued by the imagery as well as the irony of biblical stories and southern history, Wolfe titles her work Daughters of Canaan. Canaan symbolizes promise, and for activist women in particular the South has been about promise as much as fulfillment. General readers and students of southern and women's history will be drawn to Wolfe's engrossing chronicle.

A young girl's tragic loss will shape her dreams and her future... 1930 - Douro Valley, Portugal Twelve-year-old Catherine is watching the Rabalo race in Porto when the sound of a shot being fired changes her life forever. Her beloved mother, mistress for some years to Walter Shellard, a Bristol based wine and port merchant has received distressing news that her lover, Walter, has married a wealthy heiress. In her anguish she takes her own life, leaving poor Catherine alone and heartbroken. Angry and grieving, Catherine is sent to live under the guardianship of her eccentric Aunt Lopa in a small farmhouse high above the rich vineyards of the Douro valley. Here, she learns to adapt to her new life and her strange aunt but still blames her father, a man she barely knows, for her mother’s tragic death. Coming of age, beautiful Catherine is summoned to Bristol by her estranged father who presumes she’ll be as malleable as most other women. But Catherine is her father’s daughter, as strong as he is and still thirsting for revenge. A compelling family saga of loss and love perfect for fans of Fiona Valpy and Dinah Jefferies Previously published as 'House in the Hills' by Erica Brown

In the vein of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Number the Stars, this fusion of fairy tales, folklore, and World War II history eloquently illustrates the power of love and the inherent will to survive even in the darkest of times. In the land of dolls, there is magic. In the land of humans, there is war. Everywhere there is pain. But together there is hope. Karolina is a living doll whose king and queen have been overthrown. But when a strange wind spirits her away from the Land of the Dolls, she finds herself in Kraków, Poland, in the company of the Dollmaker, a man with an unusual power and a marked past. The Dollmaker has learned to keep to himself, but Karolina’s courageous and compassionate manner lead him to smile and to even befriend a violin-playing father and his daughter—that is, once the Dollmaker gets over the shock of realizing a doll is speaking to him. But their newfound happiness is dashed when Nazi soldiers descend upon Poland. Karolina and the Dollmaker quickly realize that their Jewish friends are in grave danger, and they are determined to help save them, no matter what the risks.

On the brink of revolution, with a tide of hate turned against the decadent royal court, France is in turmoil--as is the life of one young woman forced to leave her beloved Paris. After a fire destroys her home and family, Claudette Laurent is struggling to survive in London. But one precious gift remains: her talent for creating exquisite dolls that Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France herself, cherishes. When the Queen requests a meeting, Claudette seizes the opportunity to promote her business, and to return home. . . Amid the violence and unrest, Claudette befriends the Queen, who bears no resemblance to the figurehead rapidly becoming the scapegoat of the Revolution. But when Claudette herself is lured into a web of deadly political intrigue, it becomes clear that friendship with France's most despised woman has grim consequences. Now, overshadowed by the specter of Madame Guillotine, the Queen's dollmaker will face the ultimate test. Infused with the passion and excitement of a country--and an unforgettable heroine--on the threshold of radical change, this captivating novel propels readers into a beguiling world of opulence, adventure, and danger, from the rough streets of eighteenth-century London to France's lavish Palace of Versailles. "Winningly original. . .glittering with atmospheric detail!" --Leslie Carroll, author of Royal Affairs "Unique, imaginative. . .replete with delightful details and astounding characters, both real and imagined." --Donna Russo Morin, author of The Courtier's Secret

First came video and more recently high definition home entertainment, through to the internet with its streaming videos and not strictly legal peer-to-peer capabilities. With so many sources available, today’s fan of horror and exploitation movies isn’t necessarily educated on paths well-trodden — Universal classics, 1950s monster movies, Hammer — as once they were. They may not even be born and bred on DAWN OF THE DEAD. In fact, anyone with a bit of technical savvy (quickly becoming second nature for the born-clicking generation) may be viewing MYSTICS IN BALI and S.S. EXPERIMENT CAMP long before ever hearing of Bela Lugosi or watching a movie directed by Dario Argento. In this world, H.G. Lewis, so-called “godfather of gore,” carries the same stripes as Alfred Hitchcock, “master of suspense.” SPINEGRINDER is one man’s ambitious, exhaustive and utterly obsessive attempt to make sense of over a century of exploitation and cult cinema, of a sort that most critics won’t care to write about. One opinion; 8,000 reviews (or thereabouts.

Summer, 1998. Mei Misaki, age fifteen, has gone with her family to their seaside vacation home. There she meets the ghost of Teruya Sakaki, her classmate from Yomiyama North Middle School Class 3-3 who, like Mei, witnessed the mysterious events that had transpired at the school. There begins an adventure of memory and mystery as they search for the ghost's body and his memories alike.