Wrapped around the stories of these four women, is a mystery. Something''s gone wrong with the Mosquitos being built for the war effort -- they keep crashing in flight tests, for no apparent reason. Is the problem with their design, or are they being sabotaged? By whom? The traitorous Red Finns? The political subversives who have recently escaped from one of the nearby prison camps? Everyone''s on high alert, and "The Factory Voice" keeps abreast of the details. Or at least the rumours.

The lives and dreams of four vital, engaging, women revolve around mysterious events at a Fort William military aircraft factory in 1941. Loyalty and betrayal, love and worthiness, friendship and ambition are the themes which connect the characters in this lively, quirky, fast-paced novel. Wrapped around the stories of these four women, is a mystery. Something’s gone wrong with the Mosquitoes being built for the war effort - they keep crashing in flight tests, for no apparent reason. Is the problem with their design, or are they being sabotaged? By whom? The traitorous Red Finns? The political subversives who have recently escaped from one of the nearby prison camps? Everyone’s on high alert and “The Factory Voice” keeps abreast of the details or at least the rumours. Rich with forties language and imagery, especially the sights and sounds of an assembly plant, The Factory Voice is a quirky, light-hearted mystery about the daily lives of factory workers and in particular of women in a time of transition, both for their personal lives and for the society in general.

The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada—one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan The English-language debut of one of Japan's most exciting new writers, The Factory follows three workers at a sprawling industrial factory. Each worker focuses intently on the specific task they've been assigned: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. But their lives slowly become governed by their work—days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What's going on with the strange animals here? And after a while—it could be weeks or years—the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: What am I doing here? With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, The Factory casts a vivid—and sometimes surreal—portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of the modern workplace.

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China. China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta. As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life—a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation. A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.

Catrin Stevens explores the experiences of women in Wales' post-war manufacturing industry.

The instant New York Times bestseller about one man's battle to save hundreds of jobs by demonstrating the greatness of American business. The Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. Run by the same powerful Virginia family for generations, it was also the center of life in Bassett, Virginia. But beginning in the 1980s, the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately Bassett was forced to send its production overseas. One man fought back: John Bassett III, a shrewd and determined third-generation factory man, now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of more than $90 million. In Factory Man, Beth Macy brings to life Bassett's deeply personal furniture and family story, along with a host of characters from an industry that was as cutthroat as it was colorful. As she shows how he uses legal maneuvers, factory efficiencies, and sheer grit and cunning to save hundreds of jobs, she also reveals the truth about modern industry in America.

This book studies the representations of working-class women in canonical and popular American fiction between 1820 and 1870. These representations have been invisible in nineteenth century American literary and cultural studies due to the general view that antebellum writers did not engage with their society's economic and social relaities. Against this view and to highlight the cultural importance of working-class women, this study argues that, in responding to industrialization, middle class writers such as Melville, Hawthorne, Fern, Davies, and Phelps used the figures of the factory worker and the seamstress to express their anxieties about unstable gender and class identitites. These fictional representations were influenced by, and contributed to, an important but understudied cultural debate about wage labor, working women, and class.

The definitive history of America’s greatest incubator of innovation and the birthplace of some of the 20th century’s most influential technologies “Filled with colorful characters and inspiring lessons . . . The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation?” —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Gertner's book offers fascinating evidence for those seeking to understand how a society should best invest its research resources.” —The Wall Street Journal From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.

Wickersham Hollow holds the dark secret of a deal made in hell, a deal made on Halloween night in 1697. The secret is kept within a house - a house with a will of its own, a house long empty of living souls - a house with a heart of pure evil. Sequestered within that house, within its walls and hallways, is the memory of a covenant, a pact born of a man's lust for the body and soul a young woman. A pact forged in witchcraft by Torrance Wickersham, the founder of Wickersham Hollow. Now, three hundred years later, led by Tommy Vorland, seven teenagers (Henry Travis, Amy Pritchard, Lucy Darrow, Matt Holloway, Janet Egan and Tina Farley), in search of a Halloween night thrill get more than they bargained for, when they make their way into the old Wickersham house and awaken a malevolence that has lain dormant for centuries. Their nightmare begins when they discover that the house has a malicious mind of its own and Lucy is gruesomely murdered by one of its tricks. Things go from bad to hellish when Tommy is beset by a ghostly apparition that drives him insane, leaving Henry and Amy to take charge and find a way to get everyone out. But escape becomes no more than an elusive shadow when Wickersham's spirit once again roams free and turns his lustful desires toward Amy. Now, trapped in a dungeon at the mercy of Wickersham and the demon incubus he summoned, Henry and Amy must prepare themselves for the unthinkable. But this battle is not yet over, as an unexpected ally rises to turn the tide. The spirit of Mother Cassandra, a voodoo priestess who lost her daughter and her life to Wickersham all those years ago, bestows upon the group a gift and a curse - the ability to read each other's thoughts and summon a power none knew they held within. But all gifts come with a price. And when a dark deal is proffered, Henry accepts and is given a way to lead the group to safety. Their nightmare was over.Or was it? Seventy years later, Henry Travis, now eighty-six, discovers that his granddaughter, Annabel, and her husband, Brian, have purchased and renovated the old Wickersham place. He now knows the time has come to unveil its secrets - and his. He also knows that the time has come to honor the deal he made all those years ago. Somehow he must convince Annabel and Brian to abandon that house before it's too late. When his attempts to dissuade them fail and they take possession of the house, the nightmare begins again, and their only hope for survival depends on the reunion of old friends, and the assistance of a descendant of Torrance Wickersham, the only man who know the secret within the secret, and may just hold the key to ending the nightmare once and for all. The questions are: can they summon the courage to go back into that house; are they strong enough to defeat a festering evil that has three hundred years to grow stronger, and are they prepared to face what just might be their last stand?