Amish Crime

After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now. For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined.

Genovese, Gambino, Bonnano, Colombo, and Lucchese. For decades these Five Families ruled New York and built the American Mafia (or Cosa Nostra) into an underworld empire. Today, the Mafia is an endangered species, battered and beleaguered by aggressive investigators, incompetent leadership, betrayals, and generational changes that produced violent, unreliable leaders and recruits.

Think No Evil is the first insider account of the tragic events, the personal victories and the daily Amish life in Nickel Mines, written by a native of the Amish community who still lives and works where most of his relatives are Old Order Amish. Against the rich and fascinating backdrop of Amish culture, Beiler reveals the best of the human spirit in the midst of the worst, and leaves us all drawn heavenward, the richer for it.

After Maria Mast's abusive ex-boyfriend is arrested for being involved in sex trafficking and modern-day slavery, she thinks she and her son, Carter, can safely return to her Amish community. But the danger has only just begun. Someone begins stalking her, and they want blood and revenge.

Newlywed Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is awakened by an urgent midnight call summoning her to a suspicious fire in the woods. When she arrives at the scene, she discovers a charred body. According to the coroner, the deceased, an Amish man named Milan Swanz, was chained to a stake and burned alive. It is an appalling and eerily symbolic crime against an upstanding husband and father.

A young mother with a troubled past seeks help from Mel and Dana but is their effort to assist her too little, too late? Hannah Yoder appears on Dana and Mel’s doorstep late one night with her teenage friend Katie and Katie’s newborn baby in tow telling the couple the girl and child are in trouble and have no place else to go. Dana and Mel offer refuge for the night and a firm promise to talk about the future. Plans are barely made when first one mysterious tragedy strikes and then another leaving Mel, Dana, Hannah and the Crane and Rossi families with few clues and little hope. Mel ...

Bob Engels is the last person anyone would accuse of being father material. With a monkey on his back the size of a Texas fifth, his days are spent jobless and on the hunt for a quick buck to fuel his next bender. That need had now driven him here, to this moment, pondering his life choices and staring at an ad from a bulletin board at the local Walmart... Blue-eyed men between the ages of 18-35 to begat a child for a good, god-loving family. Full discretion. Complete anonymity. $1000 The only problem is, the "god-loving family" in question are the Knutson's, a tight-knit clan of criminals ...

One fateful starless night, 17-year-old Ira Wagler got up at 2 AM, left a scribbled note under his pillow, packed all of his earthly belongings into in a little black duffel bag, and walked away from his home in the Amish settlement of Bloomfield, Iowa. Now, in this heartwarming memoir, Ira paints a vivid portrait of Amish life - from his childhood days on the family farm, his Rumspringa rite of passage at age 16, to his ultimate decision to leave the Amish Church for good at age 26.

In 1978 America is still licking its wounds from the Vietnam War, an impeached president and skyrocketing oil prices. The people of the country are suspicious, questioning their government at every turn, and it’s an environment allowing conspiracy theories to flourish. It shouldn’t be a surprise one of these theories parallels a long-standing enigma we typically laugh at when we see it – and we see it all too often. Specifically, we look in wonder at the people who not only have a complete ineptitude when using power tools, but we also fear for their lives when they do so. Ironically,...

Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants in this courtroom drama from #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci.

One night four lives entered the world by the hands of an Amish midwife just outside North Star, Pennsylvania. Rebekah's babies, as they are called, are now grown adults, and in four heartwarming novellas each young person experiences a journey of discovery, love, and the wonder of Christmas.

On the night of September 6, 2011, terror called at the Amish home of the Millers. Mrs. Miller opened the door to her five estranged adult sons, a daughter, and their spouses. Within moments, the men had pulled their frightened father out of bed and sheared his hair and beard. The women then turned on Mrs. Miller, yanking her prayer cap from her head and shredding it before cutting off her waist-long hair. About twenty minutes later, the attackers fled into the darkness, taking their parents' hair as a trophy.

*** Amazon #1 Best Selling Author *** He’s Amish. She’s not. Each is looking for a change. What happens when God brings them together? Elijah Troyer is eighteen years old when he decides to go on a delayed Rumspringa, an Amish tradition when adolescents venture out into the world to decide whether they want to continue their life in the Amish culture or leave for the ways of the world. He has only been in the city for a month when his life suddenly takes a strange twist. Eve Campbell is a young woman in trouble with crime lords, and they will do anything to stop her from talking. ...

Welcome to Lyonsville, a quiet place where English and Amish shops and stores draw tourists by the busload for the atmosphere, food and handmade crafts portrayed in the serene village. The worst crime in the last twenty years was shoplifting. Growing up together, Casey and Brad just want to get married and the entire town wants to be there. However, someone from the town’s past is using quilt blocks made by a dying woman to leave a trail of clues for an escalating crime wave in the small town of Lyonsville. Starting as simple vandalism, breaking a few windows, moving on to kidnapping and ...

An extraordinarily beautiful Amish woman, a dangerous femme fatale, is the central figure in Linda Castillo's Her Last Breath, a story that reveals a dark side of Painter's Mill and its seemingly perfect Amish world. A rainy night, an Amish father returning home with his three children, a speeding car hurtling toward them out of nowhere. What at first seems like a tragic, but routine car accident suddenly takes on a more sinister cast as evidence emerges that nothing about the crash is accidental.

Amish Candy shop owner and star of TV's Bailey's Amish Sweets, Bailey King has a lot to be excited about. She's happily engaged to Aiden Brody, newly appointed county sheriff, and her candy factory is finally having its grand opening in Harvest, Ohio—just before Christmas! Bailey is ready to let the sweet celebrations begin. With the help of local community organizer Margot Rawlings, Harvest will have a Candy Land themed Christmas on the village square—featuring Bailey's recently perfected recipe for gingerbread men. When the big day comes, everything is going well—until bitter news arrives.

Everyone in Painters Mill knows the abandoned Hochstetler farm is haunted. But only a handful of the residents remember the terrible secrets lost in the muted/hushed whispers of time - and now death is stalking them, seemingly from the grave. On a late-night shift, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is called to the scene of an apparent suicide - an old man found hanging from the rafters in his dilapidated barn.

Surely the old scandal about the "English" girl, Quinn Tyler and Amishman Adam Sauder was all but forgotten. Old sins cast long shadows, but no one knew the true extent of their "sin." World weary and longing for a simpler life, Quinn was going home to Lancaster County, even knowing Adam was there and that he was the missing half of her soul.

In this electrifying thriller by New York Times best seller Linda Castillo, Kate Burkholder must uncover a family's long-hidden past to solve a brutal murder. When a tornado tears through Painters Mill and unearths human remains, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder finds herself tasked with the responsibility of identifying the bones - and notifying the family. Evidence quickly emerges that the death was no accident, and Kate finds herself plunged into a 30-year-old case that takes her deep into the Amish community to which she once belonged.

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 want to make orphans of the Slabaughs' children? And is this murder somehow related to a recent string of shocking hate crimes against the Amish?