Ann H Gabhart

1933, Louisville, Kentucky. Piper Danson's parents came through the market crash with their fortune intact, and they've picked out the perfect suitor for their daughter. The only problem? Braxton Crandall is not the man-- or the life-- she really wants. Volunteering as a horseback Frontier Nursing courier in the Appalachian Mountains for the summer, Piper find the work taxing, the scenery jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The people she meets along the way...

With the country--and her own household--on the brink of civil war, pampered gentlewoman Charlotte Vance hatches a plan to avoid her new stepmother and win back her man by joining the Shaker community at Harmony Hill. Little does she know that this decision will lead her down a road toward unforeseen peace--and a very unexpected love.

Jessamine Brady loves her Shaker sisters and brothers, but can't stop imagining life and love in the outside world.

When Darcie and Walter Goodwin hear of a new cholera epidemic sweeping the area, they join the Shakers whose villages seem immune to the disease. It's meant to be a temporary stay, but Walter is killed in a riverboat accident. With no family and no money, Darcie has little choice but to stay with the Shakers. To complicate matters, she is expecting a baby conceived before she and her husband came to the Shaker village. Marital relationships are considered...

Gabrielle Hope has a special gift of "knowing" the future. When she and her mother join the Pleasant Hill Shaker community in 1807, the members embrace her ability, although it sometimes frightens quiet Gabrielle. But when one vision comes true, a chain of events and an unlikely love challenge her loyalty to this chaste community.

It is 1936 and Kate Merritt works hard to keep her family together. Her father slowly slips into alcoholism and his business suffers during the Great Depression. As her mother tries to come to grips with their situation and her sisters seem to remain blissfully oblivious to it, it is Kate who must shoulder the emotional load. Who could imagine that a dirty, abandoned little girl named Lorena Birdsong would be just what the Merritt's need?

It is 1844 and Lacey Bishop's life is a tangled mess. Estranged from her own family, at age 16 she went to work for a preacher and his wife. When his wife died, the preacher convinced Lacey that the only decent thing to do was to marry him. That way she could continue to act as mother to the little girl who was left on his doorstop. But Lacey never expected he would decide to take them all off to a Shaker village. There she's still married but living...

"Carlyn Kearney has spent two lonely years not knowing whether to mourn or to hope after she receives word from the Union Army that her husband is missing. The war ends without further word. Now penniless, in debt, and forced from her home, Carlyn seeks refuge at the Shaker village of Harmony Hill ... [and] is just settling into life as a sister in the Shaker village when she receives a devastating letter confirming her worst fears. As she wrestles...

"It is 1844 and Lacey Bishop's life is a tangled mess. When circumstances move Lacey to a nearby Shaker village, she is not prepared for the new life that awaits her. In the midst of her deep loneliness, Lacey works to fit in with this odd group. But everything shifts when she finds herself drawn to a Shaker man in a village where such relationships are forbidden. Can Lacey ever find true happiness in this mysterious place?"--Amazon.