Book picks similar to
Plain Roots by Becki Willis


amish
fiction
mystery
amish-fiction

The Girl Who Never Came Back


Amy Cross - 2013
    Despite a frantic search, no trace of her was found until a year later, when the little girl turned up on the doorstep with no memory of where she'd been. Today, Charlotte has put her mysterious ordeal behind her, even though she's never learned where she was during that missing year. However, when her eight-year-old niece vanishes in similar circumstances, a fully-grown Charlotte is forced to make a fresh attempt to uncover the truth.The Girl Who Never Came Back is a psychological thriller about a woman who is forced to confront her family's dark past. In the process, she begins to unravel the secret surrounding her disappearance, the horrific truth about her niece's fate, and the identity of the ghostly figure that seems to haunt the family.Total word count is approximately 60,000. Contains swearing and mild, infrequent violence. Also includes a preview of The Dead and the Dying.

Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo


Heather Wardell - 2009
    After only two years of marriage, their guilt and pain have left them living together but apart, unable to really talk for fear of what they'll say to each other.Ian leaves for a month-long contract overseas, and Candice plans to use the time apart to decide whether her marriage can be saved. When her ex walks back into her life as the new client at work, ten years more attractive yet saddened by his own recent loss, she's left wondering what she really wants from life and love.

Irreparable Harm


Melissa F. Miller - 2011
    Downloaded by more than one million readers!Attorney Sasha McCandless has one goal: Make partner at the best firm in town. Then a plum assignment plunges her into a world of deceit and danger.When a commercial flight crashes, killing everyone on board, she's tapped to defend the airline. It's her big chance ... high-stakes litigation for an important client. But, as she digs into the evidence, people close to the case start dying.She discovers the crash was intentional, caused by a smartphone app capable of overriding the cockpit controls. But she's not sure who she can trust with the horrifying truth. She teams up with a federal air marshal, and they race to prevent another airline disaster.Soon, Sasha finds herself with a brand-new life goal: Stop a madman before he kills her.

The Grave of Lainey Grace


Aaron Galvin - 2015
    No one knows who steals into the cemetery after the gates are closed and locked, least of all the head groundskeeper, Bob.When Bob is warned he’ll be fired if the rose-givers sneak in again, his ten-year-old granddaughter, Briar Ann Wade, decides to find out who the perpetrators are and why they only come each fall.Briar discovers the answer to the mystery only to learn, as her grandpa says, grief and love take many forms…and there is healing in both.

The Snowman of Zanzibar


Gordon Wallis - 2018
     The endless London winter had been bitterly cold. The steady work as a freelance insurance fraud investigator was mundane and repetitive, but this suddenly changes early on a frozen February morning. The wealthy client was desperate. Just how was his high flying young son making so much money? It sounded like a dream assignment. An escape from the city and a bit of travel. And for a while it was. But on an idyllic island paradise, someone is watching, and a deadly criminal cartel operates quietly in the shadows. As Green digs deeper he uncovers the truth, but a series of unfortunate events occur. Events far beyond his control. Events that result in unspeakable violence and horror. The cartel must be stopped, but who will be the next to die? The action comes hard and fast in this gripping 1st in series page turner and culminates in an ending that will stay in your mind for a long time. A very, very long time... Pick up The Snowman Of Zanzibar today and prepare for the ride of your life.

Rejection (Lou Drake Mysteries)


Thomas K. Matthews - 2010
    Ten years later, fifty pounds heavier and three months from retirement, Drake works patrol in the backwater borough of Malcolm New York. He spends his idle time reading crime novels and writing one of his own.When Drake breaks protocol on another brutal murder scene, endangering his rookie partner, his captain demotes him to the booking cage. But when another body is discovered and both victims are identified as struggling literary agents, the NYPD Chief of Detectives decides Lou's writing experience could benefit the case and pairs him with his old partner one last time.As they look for clues in the struggling publishing industry, Drake finds himself thrust into the middle of a serial murder case where a methodical perpetrator is systematically killing those who rejected him. Drake must revive his old detective prowess and trust his writer's intuition to try and solve the case, while possibly exposing the truth about the old Hennings investigation - a secret that would expose a web of corruption that could shake the NYPD to its core.

The Smuggler's Gambit


Sara Whitford - 2015
     When 17-year-old Adam Fletcher is forced into an apprenticeship, he unwittingly becomes a pawn in a smuggling war. Soon, he’s forced to make a tough decision. Will he agree to become a spy performing a civic duty to the Crown? Or will he risk everything—possibly even putting his own family in danger—to protect his new master? Secrets will be revealed, loyalties will be questioned, betrayals will be uncovered, and a young man’s character will be put to the test in ... The Smuggler’s Gambit.

Night of the Assassin


Russell Blake - 2011
    A no-holds-barred, breakneck-paced thriller, Night charts the early years of El Rey - known as the King of Swords - a super-assassin responsible for some of the world's most spectacular and daring executions.Framed against the backdrop of present-day Mexico's brutal narco-trafficking violence, Night of the Assassin chronicles the making of a monster - a cold-blooded, ruthless killing machine. Raw, disturbing, edgy and unflinching, this epic saga defies convention to create a roller-coaster of intrigue, suspense and thrills that will leave even the most jaded thriller aficionados gasping for breath.Best if read after King of Swords, Night was written to provide background on El Rey, with the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the events in King of Swords.

Drowning With Others


Linda Keir - 2019
    Did one of them kill to get it?Prep school sweethearts Ian and Andi Copeland are envied by everyone they know. They have successful businesses, a beautiful house in St. Louis, and their eldest daughter, Cassidy, is following in their footsteps by attending prestigious Glenlake Academy. Then, a submerged car is dredged from the bottom of a swimming hole near the campus. So are the remains of a former writer-in-residence who vanished twenty years ago—during Ian and Andi’s senior year.When Cassidy’s journalism class begins investigating the death, Ian and Andi’s high school secrets rise to the surface. Each has a troubled link to the man whose arrival and sudden disappearance once set the school on edge. And each had a reason to want him gone. As Cassidy unwittingly edges closer to the truth, unspoken words, locked away for decades, will force Ian and Andi to question what they really know—about themselves, about the past, and about a marriage built on a murderous lie.

The Gingerbread Man


Maggie Shayne - 2001
    When the FBI takes over the case, Vince agrees to take time off. Traveling to a small upstate New York town, he meets Holly Newman--a fragile woman whose sister was abducted and killed years ago. Convinced that Holly's sister's death is linked to the recent murders, he attempts to unearth clues hidden deep in Holly's mind.

Beside Still Waters


Tricia Goyer - 2011
    But when her older brother chooses the world’s path following his rumschpringe, and a younger sibling begins showing interest in Englisch ways, Marianna’s parents move the family to Montana.Although she is also in her rumschpringe years and not obligated to move, Marianna makes the journey to dutifully help her mother who is expecting another child. Surprisingly, from strangers on the cross-country train ride to the less rigid stance of the new Montana community, many Englisch influences awaken within Marianna—and even her father—the desire to pursue a deeper kind of joy and love for God.After an accident, Marianna tells her friend Ben a defining story about the Sommer family, and his response further illumines the active relationship God seeks with His followers. In due time, she learns the move from Indiana was not about losing anything, but finding out who God really is. Despite all the shake-ups, Marianna feels a sweet peace, like still waters, in her soul.

No Time To Bleed: Austin Conrad Thriller #2


Dusty Sharp - 2017
    So Austin Conrad wrote his own when he decided to get the hell out. Now he’s the target of the MC’s ruthless president, who’s hell-bent to silence Austin to keep his own dark secrets buried. Set along the back roads of southern California’s Mojave Desert, the story comes to its thrilling climax among the abandoned ghost town of Amboy. When Austin is waylaid by a crew of murderous thugs from a rogue faction of the club, the hunters become the hunted, and learn the hard way that there’s more to Austin than motorcycles and petty crime. No Time To Bleed is the action-packed debut from author Dusty Sharp. This novella-length story provides a quick introduction to anti-hero Austin Conrad, and sets the stage for further adventure and mayhem. Warning: contains violence, profanity and irreverence, in equal measure.

The Preacher's Daughter


Beverly Lewis - 2005
    The Preacher's Daughter begins a remarkable journey of heartache and homespun delight - a series readers will find impossible to forget. Paradise, Pennsylvania, is likened to a little slice of heaven on earth...but for Annie Zook - the preacher's eldest daughter, it seems like a dead-end street. She 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. In her signature style, with character depth and unexpected plot twists, beloved novelist Beverly Lewis once again opens the door to the world of the Amish.

Tin God


Stacy Green - 2013
    Trapped by poverty and without many allies, Jaymee nearly gives up hope of getting her daughter back after her best friend is murdered. Now, four years later, a wealthy woman with legal connections hires her as a housekeeper, and Jaymee gathers the courage to seek her help. But Jaymee’s last chance ends up in a puddle of blood in one of the historic antebellum mansions in Roselea, Mississippi.I just murdered your wife...again.An unsigned letter consisting of six horrifying words turns Nick Samuels stagnant life upside down. Stuck in emotional purgatory since his wife’s unsolved murder four years ago, Nick is about to self-destruct. The arrival of the letter claiming credit for his wife’s murder and boasting of a new kill sends Nick to Roselea, where he and Jaymee’s worlds collide.Jaymee and Nick realize exposing the truth about her daughter’s adoption is the only way to solve the murders. Up against years of deception, they rush to identify the killer before the evidence–and Jaymee’s daughter–are lost.But the truth doesn’t always set the guilt-ridden free. Sometimes, it destroys them.

Fat Chance


R.J. Leahy - 2013
    It's an ok job, but it isn't as exciting as most people think, and that's fine by him. He makes it a rule not to get involved in active police cases or in any case where people are likely to get hurt—especially him. So why does the mob suddenly want him dead? Sure it’s all a mistake, but dead from a mistake is still dead.Taking advice from his friend, The Juke, he starts on a cross country drive to LA (what can I tell you, he has a few phobias, and flying is just one of them), and makes it as far as Mystic Falls, New Mexico before the borrowed Mercedes conks out. Mystic Falls? Think Green Acres—without the sophistication.All he had to do was lie low and wait for the car to be fixed. A good plan too. It might have worked if only the local "character" hadn’t turned up missing, with him as the prime suspect. Now if he ever wants to get out of this sleepy desert asylum, he’s going to have to find her. Fat chance.