After the death of her parents, Mennonite Brenna Zimmerman relocates to the Lancaster County farm of her Old Order Amish grandparents. There, she befriends Rylan Sanders, a disabled veteran, and commits to rising above her own grief to help him as much as she can. But when things take a turn for the worse, Brenna finds herself at a loss for what to do. As Brenna struggles, her Mennonite friend Johann Mazur, a soldier in the Ukrainian Army, encourages her to distance herself from Rylan. But when she discovers that Rylan's army buddies are withholding secrets that could help with his psychological healing, Brenna is torn between her feelings for Johann and her commitment to help Rylan. Inspired by the story of her distant relative who served with the Red Cross and supervised German POWs during World War II, Brenna considers her own future and must decide whether she has the courage to give up the comforts she craves for the life she truly wants.

"Buying a Year" is set in a not so distant time and in a city that shares its space with three rivers. One of those rivers becomes the mystic guide for Sharon, a recent young divorcee who is willing to spend her small divorce settlement on the time she needs to renew her soul.

As she creates a new life she must deal with pressures and stresses of family, loneliness and the problems of finding and developing a career. Using her meager resources frugally and pushing herself to the limits of her endurance she finds herself in both dramatic and comical situations.

Through the burden of her fears, the humor of her immigrant landlady and the passions of a troubled young Vietnam veteran, Sharon discovers a compelling world that liberates her hidden artistic talents, renews her spiritual life and teaches her the lessons of the transformations of faith and love.

"Incredibly well-researched, thoroughly enjoyable, and singularly original."--SHELLEY SHEPARD GRAY, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author "A beautiful story of love, loss, and the bonds that connect a family to its faith."--SUZANNE WOODS FISHER, bestselling author of A Season on the Wind Ivy Zimmerman is successfully navigating her life as a young Mennonite woman, one generation removed from her parents' Old Order Amish upbringing. But when her parents are killed in a tragic accident, Ivy's way of life is upended. As she deals with her grief, her younger sisters' needs, the relationship with her boyfriend, and her Dawdi and Mammi's strict rules, Ivy finds solace in both an upcoming trip to Germany for an international Mennonite youth gathering and in her great-great-aunt's story about Clare Simons, another young woman who visited Germany in the late 1930s. As Ivy grows suspicious that her parents' deaths weren't, in fact, an accident, she gains courage from what she learns of Clare's time in pre-World War II Germany. With the encouragement and inspiration of the women who have gone before her, Ivy seeks justice for her parents, her sisters, and herself.

This memoir is the amazing story of striving to live a normal life, when everything arounds you becomes more and more abnormal. It is a story about friendships and dreams of romances, a story about daily struggles and small victories set against a backdrop of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam and all the dangers that time held for Jews in the city. Through this remarkable book, we get to meet a remarkable real-life heroine whose determination, optimism and wonderful spirit are the qualities that both ensured enjoyment of life as well as the tenacity to survive. When Hannah and her family are arrested and transported to Bergen Belsen (where Hannah has one final and emotional reunion with Anne Frank), it is Hannah's courage that saves the lives of herself and her younger sister. This is a truly remarkable book that tells us more about the lives of ordinary people during World War Two than any history book can.

Can they find a way to stitch their suffering into hope and embrace an uncertain future? Tally Smucker's quiet life of reading and quilting hides her sorrow over her mother's declining health and the lack of a fulfilling future for herself. When her daily life is shaken by her free-spirited neighbor Danielle--who grew up Plain but joined the Army at eighteen--Tally's instinct is to distance herself. Yet she finds she can't turn away when Danielle's brother, Kenan, specifically asks for her help. She invites Danielle to visit Plain Patterns quilt shop with her, where the story of the plight of a WWI soldier and the girl he left behind resonates with both Tally and Danielle, but for different reasons. When Tally's mother suffers a setback at the same time Danielle's PTSD becomes unmanageable, it seems Tally's efforts to aid them only make things worse. Can the soldier's story, along with the care of Kenan, help Tally accept the hope that waits just around the corner? From the talented pen of Leslie Gould comes a moving tale of restoration and renewed hope within the Amish community.

When Savannah Mast's fiance dumps her a week before their wedding, she flees California for the safety of her Amish grandmother's farm near Nappanee, Indiana. She's not planning on staying long but becomes unexpectedly entangled in the search for a missing Amish girl. She can't leave--especially not when her childhood friend Tommy Miller is implicated as a suspect. When Savannah accompanies her grandmother to Plain Patterns, a nearby quilt shop, the owner and local historian, Jane Berger, relates a tale about another woman's disappearance back in the 1800s that has curious echoes to today. Inspired by the story, Savannah does all she can to find the Amish girl and clear Tommy's name. But when her former fiance shows up, begging her to return to California and marry him after all, she must choose between accepting the security of what he has to offer or continuing the complicated legacy of her family's faith.

When wild child Sophie Deiner--the daughter of an Amish bishop--is forced to return to Nappanee, Indiana, quilt-shop owner Jane Berger is one of only a few who welcome her back. It's the last place she wants to be, but Sophie's recent illness requires that she recover for a while. As Sophie heals, she befriends a group of migrant workers and is appalled to learn of the wretched living conditions they're forced to endure. Sophie begins advocating on their behalf, but soon finds herself opposed by an ex-boyfriend who is the farm foreman. Jane begins relating the story of an Amish couple who rescued survivors of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, many of whom were Irish immigrants. And Sophie is more convinced than ever that she needs to fight for the powerless. But when digging deeper makes conditions even worse, has she chosen a fight she can't win?

She found the diary and brought the world a message of love and hope.

It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts....Yours, Anne

For the millions moved by "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, " here at last is Miep's own astonishing story. For more than two years, Miep Gies and her husband helped hide the Franks from the Nazis. Like thousands of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, they risked their lives each day to bring food, news, and emotional support to the victims.

From her own remarkable childhood as a World War I refugee to the moment she places a small, red-orange, checkered diary -- Anne's legacy -- in Otto Frank's hands, Miep Gies remembers her days with simple honesty and shattering clarity. Each page rings with courage and heartbreaking beauty.

In this haunting memoir, Alison Gold gives a luminous account of key moments in her life that brought her to be the writer she is. They tell of her early activism; they tell of her descent into alcoholism; they tell of her recovery; they tell of her discovery of the power of writing to give a shape and meaning to a life. Found and Lost is both a tender memorial to the extraordinary people in her life, and a compelling tale of redemption. Starting with her childhood experience of running her primary school 'Lost and Found' depot, Gold develops, though a series of letters, a meditation on ageing, friendship, loss and the forces that link us to the dead. In the very act of writing, she begins to find a route out of depression and grief. Alison Leslie Gold is best known for her works that have kept alive stories from the time of the Holocaust, stories of courage and survival - most famously her Anne Frank Remembered, co-authored with Miep Gies (who risked her life to protect the Frank family). She has never chosen to write about her own life or what made her into a gatherer of other people's stories, until now, in Found and Lost. For she has chosen to go back to her childhood in order to chart the origin of her need to save objects, stories, people - including herself - who she has sensed to be on a road to perdition.