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As another college year draws to an end, Professor Michael Branden is weary after nearly thirty years of teaching. Sitting in his office on a warm spring day, he receives an unexpected visit from an Amish man who claims his brother, a dwarf like himself, has been murdered. Their discussion of the odd details of the case is interrupted by a commotion on campus, which turns out to be the apparent suicide of a young college woman, who it seems has leapt to her death from the college bell tower. The investigations of these two deaths become intertwined as Professor Branden again teams up with Pastor Cal Troyer and Sheriff Bruce Robertson to seek explanations for these bizarre events. Out of all the books so far in the Amish-Country series, this one was my favorite. First off, I believe it's the longest (though not by much) but enough to give the story a bit more depth. Second, this is a really good story dealing with everything from college life to dwarfism to genetics to child kidn...

Summary from author's website: Amid a whirlwind of drugs, sex, and other temptations of the "English" world, a group of Amish teenagers on the Rumschpringe test the limits of their parent’s religion to the breaking point. The murder of one teenager and the abduction of another challenge Professor Michael Branden as he confronts the communal fear that the young people can never be brought home safely. Along with Holmes County Sheriff Bruce Robertson and Pastor Cal Troyer, Professor Branden works against the clock to find a murderer and a kidnapper, and to break a drug ring operating in the county, determined, wherever the trail may lead him, to restore the shattered community. Unlike my last review of Clouds Without Rain which left me feeling kinda ho-hum, this new volume in the Amish-Country Mystery series brought back much revival into the series. For one, this story stood out in my mind because it shows the faults and difficulties that do happen with the Amish. The ...

Summary from Christianbook.com: In the wooded Amish hill country, a professor at a small college, a local pastor, and the county sheriff are the only ones among the mainstream, or "English," who possess the instincts and skills to work the cases that impact all county residents, no matter their code of conduct or religious creed. A fatal accident involving and Amish buggy and an eighteen-wheeler sets Professor Michael Branden on a quest to uncover the links between the crash and a spate of disturbing events. I have to say, unfortunately, out of all the books in the series that this was the most forgettable. Unlike the past books, I didn't find anything that really stood out to me in the story. It's written well and I like Professor Branden and Pastor Troyer's characters very much and I really enjoy their knowledge of the Amish community. The plot about the two sects of Amish are interesting as modernization vs Old Order gets a lot of discussion in the book. T...

Synopsis from BN.com: The peaceful town of Millersburg, Ohio, in the heart of Ohio's Amish country, is rocked by the vicious murder of one of its citizens at the hands of an ex-convict. When a local reporter covering the story ends up dead as well, with the convict already behind bars, suspicion falls on David Hawkins, father of the first victim. But Hawkins is nowhere to be found, not even among the protective Amish colony that had taken him in as one of its own regardless of his shadowy past. Following on the critical and popular success of his first book, mystery writer P. L. Gaus again brings us a moral and legal conundrum as Professor Michael Branden, Sheriff Bruce Robertson, and Pastor Cal Troyer set out to uncover the truth that seems so elusive in their otherwise quiet corner of the world. I have really liked this Amish mystery series from P.L. Gaus. I had read the first book in the series last year and really enjoyed it because it was not the normal Amish book. In fact, a...

In the wooded Amish hill country, a professor at a small college, a local pastor, and the county sheriff are the only ones among the mainstream, or "English," who possess the instincts and skills to work the cases that impact all county residents, no matter their code of conduct or religious creed. When an Amish boy is kidnapped, a bishop, fearful for the safety of his followers, plunges three outsiders into the traditionally closed society of the "Plain Ones." This is the first Amish book that I have read that is not faith based, meaning it's not from a Christian publisher. Therefore the story is a lot different from those that are from a Christian point of view. There were two main differences from what I could tell while reading. First off, while religion is a part of the story due to the Amish culture it is not a main focal point at all. The other is that there is no romance in this book. Almost all the Amish books in Christian fiction have ro...