"It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment." -- Book jacket.

When Lydia King suddenly finds herself widowed and jobless, she moves to Charm, Ohio, to be close to her mother and help with her grandfather. But when tragedy strikes her young life yet again, can she find strength in a family of young boys who need a mother, or will the gifts from a secret admirer prompt her to pursue an impossible love?

Now the subject of the Lifetime original movie An Amish Murder

Sworn to Silence is the first in Linda Castillo's New York Times bestselling Kate Burkholder series.
A killer is preying on sacred ground....
In the sleepy rural town of Painters Mill, Ohio, the Amish and "English" residents have lived side by side for two centuries. But sixteen years ago, a series of brutal murders shattered the peaceful

...

The Slabaugh family are model Amish farmers, prosperous and hardworking, with four children and a happy extended family. When the parents and an uncle are found dead in their barn, it appears to be a gruesome accident: methane gas asphyxiation caused by a poorly ventilated cesspit. But in the course of a routine autopsy, the coroner discovers that one of the victims suffered a head wound before death--clearly, foul play was involved. But who would...

"Married for eight years with no children to help fill her days, Heidi Troyer cooks up the idea of teaching classes in the art of Amish cuisine in her Holmes County, Ohio, home. But it is a recipe for drama when five very different men and women answer the advertisement. Charlene Higgins is engaged, but to the despair of her fiancé's family, she can't cook. Kendra Perkins, a teen estranged from her family, is facing an unwanted pregnancy alone....

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue--in Marilyn's case that her daughter become...

As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, fifteen-year-old M. C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love.

"It's August in Holmes County, and that means it's time for the Holmes County Fair. It's the county's biggest annual event, drawing tourists and locals alike to see livestock, eat too much fried food, and watch the rodeo and speed racing contests. This year, Millie has entered the quilting competition -- while her very not-Amish best friend, Lois Henry, is distracted by her new dating app and her search for husband number five. In a place where quilting...

Investigating the disappearance of an Amish teenager, chief of police Kate Burkholder and state agent John Tomasetti stumble on a dead body at the same time another girl goes missing, and later discover sinister links to numerous cold cases.

"Josie Henderson is most at home in and around water, and as a senior-level black female scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she is practically alone in her field. But in building this impressive life for herself, she has tried to shed the one thing she cannot: her family roots back in Cleveland. When Tick, her brother and childhood ally against their alcoholic father, arrives on her doorstep fresh from rehab and teetering on the...