Rachel Botchan

The mistakes of the past haunt Lucy Flaud, who years ago stopped attending the activities for courting-age young people in her hometown of Bird-in-Hand. Now twenty-five and solidly past the age of Amish courtship, Lucy has given up any hope of marriage, instead focusing her efforts on volunteering in both the Plain and fancy communities of Lancaster County. Yet no matter how hard Lucy strives, she feels uncertain that she'll ever find redemption....

"Katrina Stoltzfus thought she had life and love all figured out: she was going to marry John and live happily ever after. Those plans started to crumble when her father moved the family to Stoney Ridge, then completely collapsed when John decided to marry someone else. Katrina is devastated. How could she have felt so loved, yet been so deceived? As she struggles to face a future without him, a widow asks for her help to start a new business and...

"In 1911, Mabel MacGinnis is Europe's strongest woman and has performed beside her father in the Manzo Brothers Circus her entire life. But at his unexpected death, she loses everything she's ever known and sets off in the company of acrobat Jake Cunningham for America in hope of finding the mother she's just discovered is still alive. Isabella Moreau, the nation's most feted aerialist, has given everything to the circus. But age and injury now threaten...

When Auden impulsively goes to stay with her father, stepmother, and new baby sister the summer before she starts college, all the trauma of her parents' divorce is revived, even as she is making new friends and having new experiences such as learning to ride a bike and dating.

In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia's overcrowded streets and slums, and from the anti-German sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army, hoping to prove his loyalty. But an even more urgent threat has arrived. Spanish influenza is spreading through the city. Soon, dead and dying are everywhere. With no food at home, Pia must venture out in search of supplies, leaving...

Bertha Mellish, "the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl" at Mount Holyoke College, is missing. One cold November morning the junior is spotted walking through the Massachusetts woods; then, she vanishes. As a search team dredges the pond where she might have drowned, Bertha's panicked father and sister arrive at the campus desperate to find some clue as to her fate or state of mind. Bertha's best friend, Agnes, a scholarly loner studying medicine,...

"Based on a true story, this novel of WWII illuminates the power of hope in the face of hatred and prejudice. As the shadows of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party fall over Paris, Madeleine Levy draws on the spirit of her WWI hero grandfather and defends her beloved France in the only way she knows how: helping Jewish children escape the impending horror. Using her education, patience, and charm, Madeleine undertakes deadly missions, saving Jewish lives...

"Set in Amish country's beloved fictional Hickory Hollow, Tessie Miller, the youngest of her Old Order parents' five daughters, followed her heart, and the unthinkable has happened. Will she find a reason for hope, in spite of her desperate plight?"--

"Impulsive and unreserved, Lydie Stoltzfus has always felt like a disappointment-a square peg in a round hole in her quiet Amish community. Leaving Stoney Ridge seems like her best move--even though it would mean leaving Nathan Yoder behind"--

Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself - because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm...