Cranston Public Library

"From the internationally bestselling author of The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World, a heartfelt coming-of-age story that Karen Joy Fowler calls 'a timeless classic book you will read and reread.' Mary Frances 'Frankie' Lombard is fiercely in love with her family's sprawling apple orchard and the tangled web of family members who inhabit it. Content to spend her days planning capers with her brother William, competing with her brainy cousin Amanda,...

"Even the best-laid plants can go awry... After solving a murder and getting her organic farm ready to overwinter, Shiloh Bellamy still expects the next few months to be busy with repairs, spring planning, and networking with local businesses. She might even be able to broker a new partnership with Fields Brewery and its organic brewer's association. Well, she could if the owner wasn't found murdered at the county Ice Fishing Derby. Once again, Shiloh...

"Shiloh Bellamy saved her father's farm and is finally scraping by as a sustainable and organic farmer in Michigan. Since moving back, she has reconnected with old friends, including her best friend Kristy Brewer and Kristy's husband, Caine. Caine runs the farmer's market with an iron fist, and no one is surprised when he's killed except for Kristy who loved her husband despite his many faults. But when it's discovered that Caine was having an affair,...

"A breakneck procedural that is beautifully written and masterfully crafted, Erin Young's The Fields is a dynamite debut-crime fiction at its very finest. Some things don't stay buried. It starts with a body-a young woman found dead in an Iowa cornfield, on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture. When Sergeant Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations for the Black Hawk County Sheriff's...

"When Harlow Estrada is abruptly fired from her dream job and her boyfriend proves to be a jerk, her world turns upside down. She flees New York City to the one place she can always call home--the enchanted Hacienda Estrada. The Estrada family farm in Mexico houses an abundance of charmed flowers cultivated by Harlow's mother, sisters, aunt, and cousins. By harnessing the magic in these flowers, they can heal hearts, erase memories, interpret dreams--but...

"Following the death of her father, Alice returns to her home village for the first time in fifteen years, to claim the tenancy to the family farm she believes is rightfully hers." --

Only a farmer could delve so deeply into the origins of food, and only a writer of Wendell Berry’s caliber could convey it with such conviction and eloquence. A progenitor of the slow food movement, Wendell Berry reminds us all to take the time to understand the basics of what we ingest. “Eating is an agriculture act,” he writes. Indeed, we are all players in the food economy. For the last five decades, Berry has embodied mindful...

Alan Saxon flies to Honololu to act as best man at the wedding of a close friend, Donald Dukelow, an American golfer who has always beaten Saxon in play-offs. In the party are the groom's mother, who hates the idea of her son marrying a Hawaiian beauty so much younger than him, and Dukelow's first wife, Heidi, a keen golfer and admirer of Saxon. Troubles start when Saxon and Heidi play a round on the Ko Olina course. Things get rapidly worse that...

From her earliest years Michelle Hurley and her sister Nicole have been told that they are not worthy of love. As an adult Michelle still harbors such thoughts. When her sister Nicole suddenly abandons her two young children on Michelle's doorstep she wonders if she is up to the take of raising and loving these children.

Describes the problems in American agriculture due to technological innovation, gives a history of American agriculture to explain the origins of the crisis, and outlines the limitations of government farm programs and policies to cope.