Kathleen Ernst Books in Order

In 1862, young cavalry recruit Solomon Hargreave is drawn into the tangled loyalties around Harpers Ferry after rescuing Mahalia, a lockkeeper's daughter. As Confederate pressure closes in, he has to decide whom he can trust.

Best friends Teresa Kretzer and Savilla Miller have always been known as the bravest girls in Sharpsburg. As the Battle of Antietam approaches and politics divides the town, courage starts to look very different to everyone involved.

This nonfiction book looks at the Antietam campaign through the eyes of the Maryland civilians who lived through it. Ernst focuses on fear, loss, and survival after one of the war's bloodiest days.

In 1732, Suzette Choudoir returns to La Pointe Island hoping her father will win a fur-trading contest and stay with the family. When valuable furs vanish and suspicion falls on him, she races to clear his name.

After Gettysburg, Chigger O'Malley thinks floodwaters and rain may finally trap Lee's retreating army. But as war crowds into his Maryland village, he faces danger, grief, and hard questions about revenge.

Emma Henderson and her widowed mother head to Colorado Territory in 1867 to start over at a frontier newspaper. Instead they find suspicion, sabotage, and a strange whistler moving through the dark.

Jamie Carswell marches south with a Wisconsin regiment and is horrified by what war looks like in Mississippi. His cousin Althea, a committed Confederate, is fighting to keep her family together while old mistakes keep haunting her.

Orphaned Elspeth Monroe is trying to build a life with her Scottish grandparents in North Carolina in 1775. Then revolutionary pressure reaches Cross Creek, and the mystery around a stranger forces her to choose where she stands.

Kit Kittredge thinks a zoo assignment might help her newspaper dreams take off. But when the monkey house keeps being tampered with and a baby monkey is at risk, she and Stirling start digging for the truth.

After the Civil War shatters her Tennessee family, fifteen-year-old Hannah Cameron must keep her younger siblings together at any cost. Their journey to Nashville becomes a test of endurance, loyalty, and plain stubborn hope.

Fifteen-year-old Tanya Zeshonski is dragged from Wisconsin to North Carolina after her parents' divorce and pushed into Highland dance. Between a bagpiper, a ghostly ancestor, and her abandoned film dreams, summer gets complicated fast.

Josefina has grown up on stories of hidden treasure and the ghostly Weeping Woman. When a wounded stranger arrives with a secret map, old legends suddenly feel close, and Josefina cannot resist following the clues.

While visiting Kentucky's mountain country, Kit helps a folklorist document local basket weavers. When sabotage and suspicion spread through Lonesome Hollow, she has to solve the mystery without turning the community into someone else's story.

Kirsten Larson has only just started life on the Minnesota frontier when her neighbor Erik Sandahl disappears. Everyone says he ran out on his promises, but Kirsten is sure something more troubling has happened.

Spring 1945 should feel easier now that Molly's father is home again, but nothing is simple. When someone starts meddling with her wartime paper drive, Molly has to follow the clues while home life keeps shifting around her.

New curator Chloe Ellefson comes to Old World Wisconsin hoping for a fresh start. Instead she is asked to find a missing Norwegian ale bowl, and the search quickly turns into a murder investigation.

A break-in, a legendary diamond, and a murder on museum grounds pull Chloe Ellefson into another tangled case. This time the past and present meet around Swiss antiques, heirloom seeds, and people who want too much.

Caroline imagines winter will be perfect with her friend Rhonda and cousin Lydia close by. Instead she feels left out, acts in haste, and learns that hurt feelings can become dangerous on a frozen lake.

A bold choice sends Caroline into danger just when the war feels close again. Between secret errands, a desperate search, and an unexpected discovery, she learns that taking a chance can change everything.

As the fighting reaches Sackets Harbor again, Caroline has to steady herself while family, neighbors, and soldiers scramble to protect home and shipyard. War is no longer background noise. It is at her door.

When Caroline's mother is not allowed to see Papa in British custody, Caroline takes it on herself to carry a secret message. One risky errand draws her deeper into the real costs of wartime.

Caroline heads to Uncle Aaron's farm hoping to be helpful, but trouble is already there. When food starts disappearing and a thief slips through the night, she learns that right and wrong can look less simple up close.

Caroline Abbott loves sailing Lake Ontario with her father and helping at the family shipyard. When war with Britain erupts and her father is taken prisoner, she has to grow up fast and find her own ways to help.

A temporary assignment to restore a historic lighthouse on Rock Island sounds like peace and quiet for Chloe Ellefson. What she finds instead is a dangerous mystery tied to the island's past and the people still fighting over it.

A trip to Decorah with her mother should give Chloe Ellefson a break, not a corpse in an immigrant trunk. Norwegian folklore, family tension, and museum secrets make this one of her most personal cases.

Strange mishaps at Abbott's Shipyard make Caroline fear that a British spy is at work in Sackets Harbor. The worst part is that the suspect may be someone her father trusts.

This interactive adventure drops the reader into Caroline's world during the War of 1812. Alongside Caroline, you can help the Americans, uncover a possible spy, or plunge straight into danger on Lake Ontario.

Chloe heads to Minneapolis to help save an abandoned flour mill, only to find a body stuffed in a grain chute. As Roelke wrestles with grief back home, old secrets begin to threaten both their lives and their trust.

Through stories and photographs, Ernst follows early Wisconsin settlers across the seasons of farm and family life. The book offers a vivid look at work, weather, food, celebration, and endurance on the frontier.

Chloe and her sister Kari set out on a dream road trip through Laura Ingalls Wilder country with a quilt that might be the real thing. Then death, greed, and family strain turn the journey into a race against a killer.

While visiting her uncle's farm during the War of 1812, Caroline finds signs that someone is sneaking supplies to the British. She is determined to expose the smuggler, even if the truth lands painfully close to home.

Chloe is planning Old World Wisconsin's first Civil War weekend when a reenactor is found dead at one of the historic farms. The case soon reaches back to Roelke's German immigrant ancestors and a buried family secret.

This choose-your-path story sends a modern girl into Felicity Merriman's Williamsburg in 1775. Tea, protests, and the gunpowder crisis make every decision feel a little more urgent.

A temporary assignment at Pendarvis lets Chloe dig into Wisconsin's Cornish mining past. Then human remains are found in a root cellar, and old records start pointing toward a crime someone meant to keep buried.

Chloe hopes a consulting job at a Belgian-American farmhouse restoration will be a welcome distraction. Instead she finds a body in an old bake oven and a trail that leads to rare lace, old letters, and a long-hidden crime.

After her mother's death, Chloe discovers family antiques that hint at secrets she never knew. A research trip to Norway offers answers, but among fiddles, folklore, and fjords, danger keeps closing in.

Hanneke Bauer crosses the Atlantic believing she is sailing toward the home she and her husband will make together in Wisconsin. When violence destroys that hope, she is left to face widowhood, suspicion, and buried truths.

A chance to help build a small Finnish American historic site in Michigan's Upper Peninsula feels perfect for Chloe. Then she arrives to find a dead body, and her search for weaving traditions turns into another perilous case.

Four months after her arrival in Wisconsin, Hanneke Bauer is still trying to make a life on her farm. When her friend Karoline's husband is killed and blame starts falling in the wrong place, Hanneke begins asking dangerous questions.

Widowed immigrant Hanneke Bauer joins the Underground Railroad to help lead a woman from slavery toward freedom. With conductors already being killed in southern Wisconsin, every mile of the journey feels perilous.

In Harpers Ferry in 1895, Hazel and Ida Mae seem to have nothing in common. Hard times and sudden tragedy draw them together, and their unlikely friendship becomes the heart of this deeply rooted historical novel.