Readers Swoon for Amish Romance

Getting tired of True Blood? If sex-soaked entertainment has lost some of its punch, you might look to the pure, simple pleasures of Amish life and love. That's right: Amish romance novels are flying off the shelves as readers find that nothing scintillates like the chaste. "It's a huge, huge, huge trend," says one expert on romance fiction.

Popular series like Beverly Lewis' Seasons of Grace and Cindy Woodsmall's Sisters of the Quilt are set in the hardcore Amish communities that shun driving and electricity. For those writers, pushing the envelope is a scene in which an unmarried Amish woman lets down her hair in the presence of a man. "Readers get to peer inside the Amish community, and it is not like our own," an English professor tells USA Today. "Simplicity is a hallmark of that community, and simplicity is powerful."