Fifteen years ago, Lainey O'Toole made a split-second decision. She couldn't have known that her choice would impact so many. Now in her mid-twenties, she is poised to go to culinary school when her car breaks down in Stoney Ridge, the very Amish town in which her long-reaching decision was made, forcing her to face the shadowed past

Bess Reihl is less than thrilled to be spending the summer at Rose Hill Farm with her large and intimidating grandmother, Bertha. It quickly becomes clear that she is there to work the farm--and work hard. The labor is made slightly more tolerable by the time it affords Bess to spend with the handsome hired hand, Billy Lapp. But he only has eyes for a flirty and curvaceous older girl.

Lainey's and Bess's worlds are about to collide and the secrets that come to light will shock them both.

Beautifully written, The Search is a skillfully woven story that takes readers through unexpected twists and turns on the long country road toward truth. Fans both old and new will find themselves immersed in this heartwarming--and surprising--tale of young love, forgiveness, and coming to grips with the past.

A 2012 Carol Award winner for Best Long Contemporary Novel.

Everyone has been hurt. Everyone experiences conflict, great and small. Everyone has someone to forgive. But sometimes we just can't bring ourselves to forgive someone who has wronged us or we don't take the need to forgive seriously--not like the Amish do. Forgiving others in order to live at peace is woven into the very fabric of their faith. To the Amish way of thinking, "You can't love the stream without knowing the source. " We must forgive others, they believe, because God forgave us.

The Heart of the Amish invites readers into the world of a people renowned for their ability to forgive. Through true stories gathered from a variety of Amish communities, bestselling author Suzanne Woods Fisher illustrates how they are able to release their pain and desire for revenge, and live at peace with others. Her in-depth, personal research uncovers the astounding yet fundamental way the Amish can forgive anyone from the angry customer at the grocery store to the shooter at Nickel Mines. Readers will learn how to invite God into their stories, apply lessons from the Amish to their own circumstances, and find the freedom that comes with true forgiveness.

Charlotte came to Amish country to find answers. What she never expected to find was peace.

Charlotte Dolinsky is not above playing dress-up and telling a few lies to find out what happened to her only brother. In fact, that is exactly what she’s come to Lancaster County to do. Now, calling herself Mary and slipping on a kapp, Charlotte will lie her way into the confidence of anyone who knows why Ethan had to die. Unless she gets found out first.

But when Charlotte befriends a quiet Amish man named Isaac Miller, she begins to rethink her motives. And with a little help from a friend back home, Charlotte might find out that love comes packaged in ways she couldn’t have foreseen.

Isaac’s been caring for his cancer-stricken father and sympathizing with his frustrated mother for three difficult years. And that means he hasn’t been dating. He believes Hannah King is the woman for him, but Hannah is still grieving the loss of her fiancé, and Isaac has all he can handle on the farm. When Hannah’s family plays host to a woman named Mary, their new cousin shakes things up for all of them.

As Charlotte digs deeper into the mystery of Ethan’s death, she finds more than she’d bargained for in the community he once called home. But will she ever learn the truth? And what will the community—and her new family—do if they learn the truth about her?

An unplanned pregnancy. An absent father. Can love really endure all things?

Danielle Kent is anything but Amish. Just her luck to fall in love with an Amish guy.

Now she's 18, pregnant, and hopeful that the child's Amish father-Matthew Lapp-will do the right thing and marry her. She knows Matthew plans to leave his Colorado settlement for a life in the Englisch world. But that plan never included a baby.

When Matthew walks away from her and their unborn child, she has nowhere to turn. Her unlikely friendship with Levi offers some comfort-yet they have so little in common. This wasn't the plan she had for her life, and she's never felt so alone.She doesn't want to be pregnant. Doesn't want to be Amish. Doesn't want to trust God.

And yet.

God has plans beyond what her mind can imagine . . . loving plans to show a lost young woman that His love never goes away but endures forever.

Julia Lapp has planned on marrying Paul Fisher since she was a girl. Now twenty-one, she looks forward to their wedding with giddy anticipation. When Paul tells her he wants to postpone the wedding--again--she knows who is to blame. Perpetual bachelor and spreader of cold feet, Roman Troyer, the Bee Man.

Roamin' Roman travels through the Amish communities of Ohio and Pennsylvania with his hives full of bees, renting them out to farmers in need of pollinators. He relishes his nomadic life, which keeps him from thinking about all he has lost. He especially enjoys bringing his bees to Stoney Ridge each year. But with Julia on a mission to punish him for inspiring Paul's cold feet, the Lapp farm is looking decidedly less pleasant.

Can Julia secure the future she's always dreamed of? Or does God have something else in mind?

Full of the plot twists and surprises her fans love, The Keeper is the first in a new series by bestselling author Suzanne Woods Fisher. Through touching family relationships and trials of the heart, Fisher's vivid characters grapple with yielding to God's will when it doesn't match their own.

Moriah’s heart will only be safe with a man of his word.

In just a few short months, Moriah Miller’s perfect life unravels. Newly wed and newly pregnant, Moriah is abandoned by her husband, Levi. He’s left her, his family, and their faith without a backward glance. The community, stunned, rushes to the young woman’s aid.

But there is someone who feels more than just sympathy for Moriah. Gabriel Miller—Levi’s twin—longs for an intimate commitment that might someday bind them to one another. Convinced of the impossibility of his dream, Gabriel settles for a mere friendship with the woman he loves.

Moriah bravely goes on with her life, adjusting to her new role in their tight-knit Amish community and preparing for the birth of her child. She is unaware that her brief marriage—once idealized as the happiest time of her life—may have been merely a shadow of the kind of love God has created for her. A love that can mend the soul, renew her heart, and give her a future filled with hope . . . if she’ll only let it.

“Shelley Shepard Gray writes with honesty, tenderness, and depth.”—Jillian Hart

 Found is the final book in the Secrets of Crittenden County trilogy by beloved author Shelley Shepard Gray, who writes powerful novels set in a world of strong faith and simple living. The New York Times bestselling author of the popular Sisters of the Heart and Seasons of Sugarcreek series immerses her readers in the Amish life, like fellow bestselling authors Beverly Lewis, Wanda Brunstetter, and Cindy Woodsmall. In Found, Gray’s unforgettable trilogy of what happens when a terrible crime that strikes a close knit Amish community comes full-circle, “Englisher” Detective Luke Reynolds discovers the identity of Perry Borntrager’s killer and the community must come to terms with the surprising revelation. It's a remarkably heartwarming conclusion to this series, and readers will not be disappointed. 

Originally released in a 6-part serial, now you can have The Discovery–A Lancaster County Saga all in one book. Meredith and Luke Stoltzfus, an Amish couple who are faced with the greatest challenge of their young lives. Financial struggles. Arguments. A suspected pregnancy. A last-minute trip to Middlebury, Indiana. A drug addict on the run. A deadly encounter at a Philadelphia bus station. Will their love and faith be enough to bring them back together again, against all odds?

With a boss threatening to exile him to driving a bookmobile in Amish Country and a headstrong wife whose erotic pop-up books fail to revive the couples lost intimacy, Alexander retreats to a world of private annotation. Enter Henry James Jesson III, a collector with an improbably literary name, who shares a number of Alexanders unconventional interests. Soon, Jesson hires Alexander for some after-hours research. As his search advances, the librarian realizes there are many more secrets in Jessons life than the ones found in his dazzling Manhattan salon.

Grace is the oldest sister in the Hostettler family. Having put her rumschpringe (running around years) behind her, she has returned to Holmes County, joined the Amish church, and begun a new life. For the past four years, everything has been going fairly well, until the day she sees an English man who knows enough of her past to jeopardize her future. Will Gary Walker's passion for Grace destroy more than one life? Amish man Cleon Schrock is planning to marry Grace, but ignorant of her past. Will love and faith triumph over shame and deception in Holmes County?

Of Plan B, an interim volume that included several of the poems in Maggot, Robert McCrum recently said in the London Observer that "Paul Muldoon, who has done so much to reimagine the poet's task, has surpassed himself with his latest collection." In his eleventh full-length book, Muldoon reminds us that he is a traditional poet who is steadfastly at odds with tradition. If the poetic sequence is the main mode of Maggot, it certainly isn't your father's poetic sequence. Taking as a starting point W. B. Yeats's remark that the only fit topics for a serious mood are "sex and the dead," Muldoon finds unexpected ways of thinking and feeling about what it means to come to terms with the early twenty-first century. It's no accident that the centerpiece of Maggot is an outlandish meditation on a failed poem that draws on the vocabulary of entomological forensics. The last series of linked lyrics, meanwhile, takes as its subject the urge to memorialize the scenes of fatal automobile accidents. The extravagant linkage of rot and the erotic is at the heart of not only the title sequence but also many of the round songs that characterize Maggot, and has led Angela Leighton, writing in The Times Literary Supplement, to see these new poems as giving readers "a thrilling, wild, fairground ride, with few let-ups for the squeamish."

In A Plain and Simple Christmas, from the author of the widely popular Kauffman Amish Bakery Series, shunned Anna Mae doesn’t receive the welcome she expects when she pays a visit for Christmas and her world begins to fall apart, leaving her to question her place in her family—and her faith in God.

Set in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Naomi’s Gift reintroduces twenty-four-year-old Naomi King, who has given up her dreams of finding true love. But when a young widower stirs surprising feelings in her, Naomi cautiously opens her heart to him and receives an unexpected response that once again turns her world upside-down.

Author Amy Clipston artfully paints a panorama of simple lives full of complex relationships, and she carefully explores cultural differences and human similarities, with inspirational results.

Caught between a stifling Amish community and an unnerving outside world, a devout young woman on the run is about to become the newest arrival to West Kootenai, Montana.

On the day of her sister's death, Rebecca Troyer took her first step away from the Amish.

Rebecca had always strayed a little outside the fold―a job at an Englisch bakery, long weekends with non-Amish friends―but nothing could have prepared her family for what she is about to do: Rebecca is abandoning the community to attend nursing school. She is headed to college, into “the world.”

But she has to make it across the country first.

When she stops in West Kootenai, at the home of a lapsed Amish friend from her youth, Rebecca finds a lot more in Montana than she had bargained for―namely a handsome working man named Caleb Hooley.

Caleb is at a crossroads of his own. A daredevil bachelor with high standards, he has decided he’ll never find an Amish woman who can quench his thirst for adventure. Needless to say, the pretty Amish girl who has fled her community in secret catches his attention immediately.

As hearts are opened and secrets are revealed, Rebecca and Caleb find they have much more in common than just their Amish background. But can this runaway find love with a risk-taker who has lost his faith in God? All it will take is one week in the wilderness to find out . . .

Three Paths to the Heart of the Amish Country

These three bestselling novels will take you deep into the fascinating world of the Amish with family drama you won't soon forget.

The Postcard by Beverly Lewis

Rachel Yoder, a young Amish widow, escapes from her sorrow by helping her family run a bed-and-breakfast in Lancaster County. A guest's discovery of an old postcard in his room begins to unravel a faded tapestry of secrets in Rachel's community. Rachel must search her heart--and her past--to restore a splintered family tree.

The Crossroad by Beverly Lewis

Drawn back to Lancaster County, Englisher Philip Bradley struggles with his attraction to a beautiful Plain woman who has suffered unbearable heartache. He fears that his growing affection for her will only bring more of the same. Must they sacrifice a future together for the sake of all they know and love?

Sanctuary by David and Beverly Lewis 

Melissa James has a picture-perfect existence--or so it seems. In reality, she has been looking over her shoulder her entire life. Just as her secrets are about to catch up with her, she seeks a haven in Pennsylvania Amish Country. Will her stay bring her the peace she longs for, or will it bring danger to the Plain community?

The leadership in an Old Order Amish community requires shunning friends and family whose only offense is to embrace the new Protestant practice of Sunday school among the Mennonites, but teaching Bible stories to children is one of Clara Kuhns’ great joys. Clara’s on the verge of saying yes to Andrew Raber’s marriage proposal, but now he is flagrantly refusing to submit to the bishop’s authority by owning a car. When the lot falls to Moses Beachy to become the new bishop, the community waits for him to take bold steps toward change. Clara and Andrew step together into a more progressive Amish faith as the Beachy Amish take form.

X marks the spot for Bellingham, Washington, on Anna Medina's self-discovery map.

Twenty-five-year-old Anna—restless, famished and emotionally numb—is following the long-cold trail of her father, a celebrated luthier, whose death has always haunted her. She has tracked his former business partner to a sailboat on Bellingham Bay, determined to pry from the old man the secrets of their guitarmaking trade, and maybe a few answers about her father.

Anna catches an echo of her musical father in Arlan, guitar player for a local band. Soon she's living on his sofa, hanging out with his girlfriend—having friends for the first time, even. And if Anna's new friends do drugs, read her journal and leave open a few too many bedroom doors, who's to say they aren't real friends? And if Anna has feelings for Arlan, who's to say where her loyalty lies?

About the Author

Jody Gehrman has authored eleven published novels and numerous plays for stage and screen. Her debut suspense novel, Watch Me, is published by St. Martin's Press. Her Young Adult novel, Babe in Boyland, won the International Reading Association’s Teen Choice Award and was optioned by the Disney Channel. Jody’s plays have been produced or had staged readings in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. Her newest full-length, Tribal Life in America, won the Ebell Playwrights Prize and will receive a staged reading at the historic Ebell Theater in Los Angeles. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I. She holds a Masters Degree in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California and is a professor of Communications at Mendocino College in Northern California.