This vivid portrait of France on the eve of the Revolution is also a touching tale of two friends torn apart by class and the powerful political force of democratic freedom.

"In this heartfelt tale of labor and love, Ernst produces one of her most winning combinations of historical evocation and clever mystery."—Kirkus Reviews Greed, Uncertainty, and Death Get Tangled in the Mystery of a Rare Piece of Belgian Lace Curator Chloe Ellefson needs distraction from the unsettling family secret she's just learned. It doesn't help that her boyfriend, Roelke McKenna, has been troubled for weeks and won't say why. Chloe hopes a consulting job at Green Bay's Heritage Hill Historical Park, where an old Belgian-American farmhouse is being restored, will be a relaxing escape. Instead she discovers a body in a century-old bake oven. Chloe's research suggests that a rare and valuable piece of lace made its way to nearby Door County, Wisconsin, with the earliest Belgian settlers. More importantly, someone is desperate to find it. Inspired by a courageous Belgian woman who survived cholera, famine, and the Great Fire, Chloe must untangle clues to reveal secrets old and new...before the killer strikes again.

When colonial Williamsburg explodes like a powder keg on the eve of the American Revolution, Lady Elisabeth "Liberty" Lawson is abandoned by her fiancé and suspected of being a spy for the hated British. No one comes to her aid save the Patriot Noble Rynallt, a man with formidable enemies of his own. Liberty is left with a terrible choice. Will the Virginia belle turned lacemaker side with the radical revolutionaries, or stay true to her English roots? And at what cost? Historical romance favorite Laura Frantz is back with a suspenseful story of love, betrayal, and new beginnings. With her meticulous eye for detail and her knack for creating living, breathing characters, Frantz continues to enchant historical fiction readers who long to feel they are a part of the story.

In seventeenth-century France, a young woman, Gilonne Perdriel, is forced to carry on the lacemaking tradition into which she was born and which crippled her mother and grandmother, but her talent and beauty soon captivate many men

A graphic illustration of how women bear the impact of development processes in countries where poor peasant and tribal societies are being 'integrated' into an international division of labor under the dictates of capital accumulation.