Most Popular Books by Amy Hill Hearth

An inspiring memoir by two lively, keen-witted African American senior citizens. In their 200+ combined years, Sadie and Bessie Delany have seen it all. They saw their father, who was born into slavery, become America''s first black Episcopal bishop. They saw their mother--a woman of mixed racial parentage who was born free--give birth to ten children, all of whom would become college-educated, successful professionals in a time when blacks could scarcely expect to receive a high school diploma. They saw the post-Reconstruction South, the Jim Crow laws,

A children''s biography of Sophie and Bessie.

"In this sequel to Hearth''s debut novel... the characters reunite one year later (late summer 1964) to fight a large development along the tidal river where book club member Robbie-Lee grew up and where his mother, Dolores Simpson, a former stripper turned alligator hunter, still lives in a fishing shack. The developer is Darryl Norwood, ex-husband of narrator Dora Witherspoon, who returns to Collier County to assist in the battle"--

Jackie accepts an opportunity to host a local radio show where she creates a late-night persona, Miss Dreamsville, and launches a reading group thus sending the conservative and racially segregated town into uproar.

From the bestselling author of Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters'' First 100 Years comes the inspiring true story of Marion "Strong Medicine" Gould, a Native American matriarch, and the Indian way of life that must never be forgotten. Amy Hill Hearth''s first book, Having Our Say, told the true story of two century-old African-American sisters and went on to become an enduring bestseller and the subject of a three-time Tony Award-nominated play. In "Strong Medicine" Speaks, Hearth turns her talent for storytelling to a Native American matriarch presenting a powerful account of Indian life. Born and raised in a nearly secret part of New Jersey that remains Native ancestral land, Marion "Strong Medicine" Gould is an eighty-five-year-old Elder in her Lenni-Lenape tribe and community. Taking turns with the author as the two women alternate voices throughout this moving book, Strong Medicine tells of her ancestry, tracing it back to the first Native peoples to encounter the Europeans in 1524, through the strife and bloodshed of America''s early years, up to the twentieth century and her own lifetime, decades colored by oppression and terror yet still lifted up by the strength of an enduring collective spirit. This genuine and delightful telling gives voice to a powerful female Elder whose dry wit and charming humor will provide wisdom and inspiration to readers from every background.

Sarah and A. Elizabeth Delany, now 105 and 103 years old, took the reading public by storm with their surprise bestseller, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters'' First 100 Years. Since then, people all over the world have been writing and asking them questions.

From New York Times bestselling author Amy Hill Hearth comes her first historical thriller, inspired by the story of the 1916 Jersey Shore shark. “Sharks are as timid as rabbits,” says a superintendent of the Coast Guard, dismissing the possibility that a shark could be the culprit in an unprecedented fatal attack at the Jersey Shore. It’s July, and swimming in the sea is a popular new pastime, but people up and down the East Coast are shocked and mystified by the swimmer’s death. A prominent surgeon at the shore, Dr. Edwin Halsey is the one who examines the victim, and the only one who believes the perpetrator was a shark—and that it will strike again. With the public and the authorities—and even those who witnessed the attacks—so stubbornly disbelieving, Dr. Halsey finds himself fighting widespread confusion, conspiracy theories, and outright denial. Seeking the input of commercial fisherman, he soon learns they have long been concerned about a creature they call the Beast. The Lenape, one of the tribes native to the area, have their own beliefs about this creature, but can Dr. Halsey convince the rest of the world before it’s too late? The story of the 1916 Jersey Shore shark changed the way Americans think of the seashore, reminding us once again that nature plays by its own rules.

The national bestseller that has inspired women everywhere to focus on what matters most and follow their dreams wherever they may lead. “Never losing faith, we worked to redeem the promise of America, that all men and women are created equal. For our daughters and our granddaughters today we have broken the marble ceiling. For our daughters and our granddaughters now the sky is the limit.” —Nancy Pelosi, after being sworn in as Speaker of the House When Nancy Pelosi became the first woman Speaker of the House, she made history. Now she continues to inspire women everywhere in this thought-provoking collection of wise words—her own and those of the important people who played pivotal roles in her journey.

Starred reviews hail Streetcar to Justice as "a book that belongs in any civil rights library collection" (Publishers Weekly) and "completely fascinating and unique” (Kirkus). An ALA Notable Book and winner of a Septima Clark Book Award from the National Council for the Social Studies. Bestselling author and journalist Amy Hill Hearth uncovers the story of a little-known figure in U.S. history in this fascinating biography. In 1854, a young African American woman named Elizabeth Jennings won a major victory against a New York City streetcar company, a first step in the process of desegregating public transportation in Manhattan. This illuminating and important piece of the history of the fight for equal rights, illustrated with photographs and archival material from the period, will engage fans of Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin and Steve Sheinkin’s Most Dangerous. One hundred years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Elizabeth Jennings’s refusal to leave a segregated streetcar in the Five Points neighborhood of Manhattan set into motion a major court case in New York City. On her way to church one day in July 1854, Elizabeth Jennings was refused a seat on a streetcar. When she took her seat anyway, she was bodily removed by the conductor and a nearby police officer and returned home bruised and injured. With the support of her family, the African American abolitionist community of New York, and Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Jennings took her case to court. Represented by a young lawyer named Chester A. Arthur (a future president of the United States) she was victorious, marking a major victory in the fight to desegregate New York City’s public transportation. Amy Hill Hearth, bestselling author of Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, illuminates a lesser-known benchmark in the struggle for equality in the United States, while painting a vivid picture of the diverse Five Points neighborhood of Manhattan in the mid-1800s. Includes sidebars, extensive illustrative material, notes, and an index.

Amy Hill Hearth shares the story of Norman and Amalie Petranker Salsitz, a couple who survived the Holocaust in Poland by posing as Christians, and discusses the friendship that developed between the Salsitzes and Hearth, who was motivated to write the book in part by her uneasy feelings about being of German descent.