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THE BEES By Laline Paull

A member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive, Flora 717, due to her courage and strength, finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers secrets about the hive that cause her to challenge authority and perform unthinkable acts. Thrilling, suspenseful, and spectacularly imaginative, this book will forever change the way you look at the world outside your window.

FARM FRESH MURDER By Paige Shelton

In this cozy mystery series, Becca Robins leads a simple life, making jams and preserves on her very own farm. But when there’s a murder in her quaint little town, she puts herself in the line of fire to defend her friend’s innocence-and goes from making jam to being in one. Who knew the farmers’ market was a hotbed of secrets and betrayals?

THE SEED KEEPER By Diane Wilson

Rosalie returns to her childhood home as a widow and mother. She has spent the previous two decades on her husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden, even though the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. A haunting that follows a Dakota family’s struggle to preserve their way of life and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.

A THOUSAND ACRES By Jane Smiley

When their father, a wealthy farmer, decides to retire and offers to divide the land between his three daughters, Ginny and Rose accept the offer, but Caroline refuses and is banished from the family, which causes dark, deep-rooted secrets to come to light that will forever change all of their lives. This gripping novel, with echoes of King Lear, was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

FOLKS, THIS AIN’T NORMAL By Joel Salatin

A third-generation farmer from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia provides a serious examination of the origin of the nation’s current food supply and advocates for rebuilding America through family farms, sustainable living, and fresh and natural eating.

THE MODERN HOMESTEAD GARDEN By Gary Pilarchik

Filled with easy-to-employ ideas and lessons for improving your food self-sufficiency no matter how much land you have, “The Modern Homestead Garden” focuses on planting, growing, harvesting, and preserving food.

THE RURAL DIARIES By Hilarie Burton Morgan

From the beloved actress, Hilarie Burton Morgan comes her inspiring story of leaving Hollywood to buy a farm and candy shop in upstate New York with her husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Celebrate community, family, and the value of hard work in small town America.

THE VICTORY GARDEN By Rhys Bowen

As the Great War continues to take its toll, headstrong twenty-oneyear-old Emily Bryce is determined to contribute to the war effort. She volunteers as a ‘land girl,” tending to the neglected grounds of a large Devonshire estate. It’s here that Emily discovers the long-forgotten journals of a medicine woman who devoted her life to her herbal garden. As she learns more about the volatile power of healing with herbs, the found journals will bring her to the brink of disaster but may open a path to her destiny.

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE: A YEAR OF FOOD LIFE

By Barbara Kingsolver

Join the author and her family on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COUNTRY LIVING

By Carla Emery

Offers advice in food preservation, recipes, gardening, beekeeping, raising livestock, soap making, and other farm and household activities for living well and living simply. This 50th anniversary edition of the original manual offers up-to-date and detailed information for living a selfsufficient lifestyle in the 21st century.

EPIC TOMATOES By Craig LeHoullier

Savor your best tomato harvest ever! Craig LeHoullier provides everything a tomato enthusiast needs to know about growing more than 200 varieties, from planting to cultivating and collecting seeds at the end of the season. He also offers a comprehensive guide to various pests and tomato diseases, explaining how best to avoid them with beautiful photographs and intriguing tomato profiles throughout.

WE ARE EACH OTHER’S HARVEST By Natalie Baszile

The author of the novel “Queen Sugar” gathers together essays, poems, photographs, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories to examine Black people’s connection to the American land from Emancipation to today. A beautiful exploration and celebration of Black farming in America.

HARLEM GROWN By Tony Hillery

A picture-book account of the uplifting story of New York City’s Harlem Grown garden describes how students from an underfunded school turned a vacant lot into an aesthetic and functional farm built on practices of community collaboration and sustainable eating.

FARMER DUCK By Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury

An uplifting modern fable depicts a hardworking duck who cooks, cleans, farms, and otherwise cares for his fellow animals to compensate for their farmer’s laziness until the duck’s exhausted collapse compels the other farmyard animals to come to the rescue.