Frank Carlson Library

Bestselling author Viola Shipman delights with this captivating summertime escape set along the sparkling shores of Lake Michigan, where a woman searches for clues to her secretive mother's past. Devastated by the sudden death of her mother--a quiet, loving and intensely private Southern seamstress called Miss Mabel, who overflowed with pearls of Ozarks wisdom but never spoke of her own family--Sutton Douglas makes the impulsive decision to pack up...

Amish-raised Izzy Mueller doesn't fit in with her family or her community. She works as a caregiver and is in love with with Mennonite-raised Zed Bayer who is leaving soon for college. When she learns some unsavory news about her own past she begins to question many things about her life.

The year 1900 ushers in a new century and the promise of social change, and women rise together toward equality. Yet rules and restrictions remain, especially for women like Alice Butterworth, whose husband has abruptly disappeared. Desperate to make a living for herself and the child she carries, Alice leaves the bitter cold of Chicago far behind, offering sewing lessons at a New Orleans orphanage. Constance Halstead, a young widow reeling with shock...

Whisked away to America when her father is falsely accused of slave trading, Catherine Newbury disguises her identity and becomes a sought-after seamstress in Philadelphia, where she catches the eye of an architect who met her before she went into hiding.

"In London, 1939, Ada Vaughan is a young woman with an unusual dressmaking skill, and dreams of a better life for herself. That life seems to arrive when Stanislaus, an Austrian aristocrat, sweeps Ada off her feet and brings her to Paris. When war breaks out, Stanislaus vanishes, and Ada is taken prisoner by the Germans, she must do everything she can to survive: by becoming dressmaker to the Nazi wives. Abandoned and alone as war rages, the choices...

While preparing The Hollywood Glamour Exhibition at the Smithsonian, costume conservator Sylvia Early discovers another name beneath a label and unearths the story of Zora Hough, a talented young seamstress who left her poverty-stricken life in 1924 Jazz Age Seattle behind to realize her dreams of becoming a designer.

Hoping to find new meaning in his life, British intelligence officer Simon Duval resigns his commission and returns to England, where he finds his cousin's widow, Suzanne Duval, the Comtesse de Chambron. Working as a seamstress, living in reduced circumstances among London's French emigre community, Suzanne has had a life as complicated as Simon's own. While both believe they are beyond love and passion, their sympathetic bond leads him to propose...

1940: As the Germans advance upon Paris, young seamstress Estella Bissette is forced to flee everything she's ever known. She's bound for New York City with her signature gold dress, a few francs, and a dream: to make her mark on the world of fashion. Present day: Fabienne Bissette journeys to the Met's annual gala for an exhibit featuring the work of her ailing grandmother - a legend of women's fashion design. But as Fabienne begins to learn more...

Izzy Mueller is an exceptional listener and gifted caregiver. She's also a talented seamstress. As the young woman sits with her elderly patients, she quietly sews as they share their stories. She's content with her life until circumstances reconnect her with someone she once loved. Zed Bayer, a Mennonite, is not what her family is hoping for in a spouse, and his creative interest in filmmaking is definitely at odds with her Amish upbringing.

"In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruild by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans is a safe haven after she's forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Uruline convent in the middle of the carnival season, Celine is quickly enraptured by the vibrant city, from its music to its fancy soirěs and even its danger. She becomes embroiled in the city's glitzy underworld, known as La Cour...