Mystery - Recent Titles from Ohio University Press

Separate from the World

Mon, 16 Jun 2008

Separate from the World (2008)
An Ohio Amish Mystery

By P. L. Gaus

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 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 his colleagues Pastor Cal Troyer and Sheriff Bruce Robertson to seek explanations for these bizarre events.

Separate from the World is a story of a rift between two Amish factions, one that favors the use of medicine and that participates in a college study of genetic traits particular to the Amish community, and the other that rejects any outside influence.

Once more, P. L. Gaus takes us inside a separate culture and, in a manner both gentle and grim, highlights the complex relationship of the Amish and the “English” as they live inside or outside each other’s orbits.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Separate+from+the+World.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

A Prayer for the Night

Tue, 14 Mar 2006

A Prayer for the Night (2006)
An Ohio Amish Mystery

By P. L. Gaus

Amid a whirlwind of drugs, sex, and other temptations of the “English” world, a group of Amish teenagers on their Rumschpringe test the limits of their parents' religion to the breaking point. The murder of one 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. In his desperate search, Branden struggles with the reluctance of the Amish to trust the law to help them find the answers to their problems.

In A Prayer for the Night, his fifth Ohio Amish Mystery, P. L. Gaus deftly balances the pace and practices of Amish life in northern Ohio against the unfolding urgency of a hostage situation. As Gaus has proven before, the mystery gains from its exploration of the ever-widening chasm between the traditional life of the Amish people and their interaction with the outside world.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/A+Prayer+for+the+Night.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Cast a Blue Shadow

Sat, 15 Nov 2003

Cast a Blue Shadow (2003)
An Ohio Amish Mystery

By P. L. Gaus

What is the relationship between history and fiction in a place with a contentious past? And of what concern is gender in the telling of stories about that past?

After the first blizzard of an early winter, a Mennonite college girl with a troubled past appears curled up and bloodied outside the offce of her childhood psychiatrist. Mute for many years as a child, Martha Lehman is again not talking.

That same morning, the wealthy mother of Martha's boyfriend is found murdered in her mansion in the country west of Millersburg, Ohio. Professor Michael Branden and Sheriff Bruce Robertson begin an investigation that, in the space of a single weekend, implicates Martha, threatens to tear apart the fabric of Millersburg College, pits one professor against another, and brings Caroline Branden near to a breaking point over the girl she once tried so fervently to help and who now seems determined to let no one help her at all.

As Martha struggles to understand her enigmatic past and as Professor Branden wrestles with the murder of the college 6's leading benefactor, the real story of Martha Lehman emerges--born Amish, converted to Mennonite, and drawn to the English world for the worst of reasons.

In Cast a Blue Shadow, his fourth Ohio Amish Mystery, P. L. Gaus continues to explore the thresholds of culture and faith among the Amish sects and their English neighbors of northern Ohio. Through interwoven plots, Gaus portrays these ways of life at odds with one another despite their seeming harmony. Coupling those clashes with the petty and desperate scufflings of academic politics, Gaus spins a suspenseful tale of power, pride, and tested faith.

With Cast a Blue Shadow, Professors Branden and Gaus have done it again.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Cast+a+Blue+Shadow.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Clouds Without Rain

Fri, 01 Jun 2001

Clouds Without Rain (2001)
An Ohio Amish Mystery

By P. L. Gaus

In the wake of a fatal accident involving an Amish horse-and-buggy and an eighteen-wheeler, Professor Michael Branden, working with the Holmes County Sheriff’s Department, becomes suspicious about the true nature of the crash. His suspicions grow when the trustee of the dead man’s estate disappears a few days later, and Branden knows he has more on his hands than a buggy crash on a sleepy country road.

Faced with Amish teenagers robbing buggies on dusty lanes, land swindles involving out-of-town developers, several people dead, and a bank official missing, Branden struggles to understand the connections that will eventually link all of the pieces together.

Clouds without Rain is a well-plotted story about the core of the human condition, as illustrated by the thought and faith of the Amish, and by their stewardship of the land they hold sacred. Once again, P. L. Gaus provides compelling intrigue along with an insight into a culture making its way side by side with contemporary American life.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Clouds+Without+Rain.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Broken English

Thu, 01 Jun 2000

Broken English (2000)
An Ohio Amish Mystery

By P. L. Gaus

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.

Along the way, Gaus paints a unique portrait of the relationship between the Amish and the "English" cultures as seen from the inside. Against this backdrop, Broken English is a tale of honor, deception, and revenge, where circumstances and the search for justice test the mettle of the closest of friends and reveal the desperate measures of the strongest of foes.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Broken+English.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Blood of the Prodigal

Tue, 01 Jun 1999

Blood of the Prodigal (1999)
An Ohio Amish Mysteries

By P. L. Gaus

From the choppy waves of Lake Erie's Middle Bass Island to the too-tranquil farmlands of Holmes County's Amish countryside, mystery and foreboding lurk under layers of tradition and repression before boiling up to the surface with tragic consequences.

For Jon Mills, the journey begins with his decision to retrieve his ten-year-old son from the hands of the Bishop who had ten years earlier cast Mills out of the Order, the same Bishop who is Jon Mills's father.

When Mills turns up dead, dressed in Amish garb, and with the boy missing, Professor Michael Branden plunges headlong into the closed culture to unravel the mystery and find the boy. Working in tandem sometimes and at cross purposes at others with his old friend Sheriff Robertson, Professor Branden digs through the past, recent and otherwise, to uncover the truths that many would prefer to leave undisturbed.

In the tradition of Tony Hillerman, P. L. Gaus depicts a culture that stands outside the norm, but one that is every bit as susceptible to the undertow of the human spirit as any we might know.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Blood+of+the+Prodigal.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.