"Annie Zook--the preacher's eldest daughter--is expected to join the Amish church, but at 20 she is 'still deciding.' Because of the strict rules that guide the Plain community, she must continually squelch her artistic passion, although it has become her solace"--Provided by publisher.

North and South tells the story of Margaret Hale, a southerner newly settled in the northern industrial town of Milton, whose ready sympathy with the discontented millworkers sits uneasily with her growing attraction to the charismatic mill owner, John Thornton. The novel poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience, ranging from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny and industrial action. Margaret's...

Ruth Livingstone's life changes drastically the day her father puts a young child in her arms and sends her to a small village in New Jersey under an assumed name. There Ruth pretends to be a widow and quietly secludes herself until her father is acquitted of a crime. But with the emergence of the penny press, the imagination of the reading public is stirred, and her father's trial stands center stage. Asher Tripp is the brash newspaperman who determines...

Jocie Brooke has never wanted for love, despite the fact that she hardly remembers her mother. Jocie's father, preacher David Brooke, has done his best to be both father and mother to his daughter. Even Jocie's spinster Great-aunt Love, who's slowly going senile, cares for Jocie in her own stern way. But in their small town of Hollyhill, Kentucky, painful secrets lie just beneath the surface, and inquisitive spirits discover surprising truths. There's...

The grown children of vicar Andrew Phelps and Julia Hollis now face challenges of their own. Surgeon Philip Hollis's wife resents his family. And writer Aleda Hollis craves privacy. But when Andrew requires Philip's medical skills and Aleda unwittingly advances an evil man's schemes, newcomer Jewel Libby becomes a source of strength for the family.

Was it a misstep that sent a handsome stranger plummeting to his death from a cliff? Or something more sinister? Fun-loving adventurers Bobby Jones and Frances Derwent's suspicions are certainly roused--espeically since the man's dying words were so peculiar: Why didn't they ask Evans? Bobby and Frances would love to know. Unfortunately, asking the wrong people has sent the amateur sleuths running for their lives--on a wild and deadly pursuit to discover...

While trying to deal with her depressed mother and her pious father in a small Midwest town in the 1960s, eleven-year-old Grace struggles with inherited psychic powers that her aunt calls "The Knowing." Grace Carter has the Knowing. It offers glimpses of people's pasts and futures, and allows Grace to talk to Isaac, her twin brother who died at birth. To Aunt Pearl, the Knowing is a family gift; to Grace's strict Evangelical pastor father, it's witchcraft....

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend...

Marilynne Robinson's mythical world of Gilead, Iowa -- the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack -- and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. Jack is Robinson's fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead's Presbyterian minister, and...