Akron Public Library

"Elizabeth Duncan has nowhere to turn. In charge of her younger brother and sister after their parents die, her options are limited. When she hears that the Shaker community in the next county takes in orphans, she presents herself and her siblings at Harmony Hill. Despite the hard work and strange new beliefs around her, Elizabeth is relieved to have a roof overhead and food to eat. But when she feels a strong attachment to a handsome young Believer...

"A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history Kentucky, 1850. Jarrett, an enslaved groom, and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. As the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young...

Addie Cowherd dreamt of being a novelist and offering readers the escape that books gave her during her tragic childhood. But it's the Great Depression, and when her adoptive father loses his job, Addie is forced to leave college and take the only employment she can find: delivering books on horseback to poor coal mining families in the hills of Kentucky. The community of Boone's Hollow is suspicious of outsiders and steeped in superstitions that...

Nealy Coleman Diamond rides fast, loves hard, and lives with an appetite for winning no one can match. With Nealy, horses come first. So when her two grown children's irresponsible acts nearly cost her Shufly, the foal that carries all her hopes for the Triple Crown, she throws them both off Blue Diamond Farm, a decision that changes their future and her own.To the world, Nealy looks unbreakable. Inside her heart has shattered. Estranged from her...

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 Merritts need?

Rose, a beautiful and mysterious woman living at St. Elizabeth's home for unwed mothers, has no intention of telling her mother or her husband about her pregnancy, until a healing spring near the home changes her mind.

She longs for peace--for her land and her heart--but can it truly be found at Harmony Hill? 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. When the war ends without further word, Carlyn finds herself penniless, in debt, and forced from her home. With nowhere else to go, she seeks refuge at the Shaker village of Harmony Hill. The Shakers profess...

When Timothy Fisher decides to move his wife, Hannah, and daughter, Mindy, to Christian County, Kentucky, where two of his brothers now reside, Hannah is very reluctant to leave her Amish home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.