'I hate to be thought men's property in that way'. Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her confident presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, the soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and when tragedy ensues,...

Märit Laurens is a young woman of British descent who comes to live with her husband, Ben, on their newly purchased farm along the border of South Africa. Shortly after her arrival, violence strikes at the heart of Märit's world. Devastated and confused but determined to run the farm on her own, Märit finds herself in a simmering tug of war between the local Afrikaner community and the black workers who live on the farm, both

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"Talk of impending war is a steady drumbeat throughout North Carolina, though Joetta McBride pays it little heed. She and her husband, Ennis, have built a modest but happy life for themselves, raising two sons, fifteen-year-old Henry, and eleven-year-old Robert, on their small subsistence farm. They do not support the Confederacy's position on slavery, but Joetta considers her family to be neutral, believing this is simply not their fight. Her opinion...

"When Megan Sawyer gives up her big-city law career to care for her grandmother and run the family's organic farm and café, she expects to find peace and tranquility in her scenic hometown of Winsome, Pennsylvania. Instead, her goat goes missing, rain muddies her fields, the town denies her business permits, and her family's Colonial-era farm sucks up the remains of her savings. Just when she thinks she's reached the bottom of the rain barrel, Megan...

Megan Sawyer should be shouting from the barn roof. Washington Acres survived its first year, the café has become a hotspot for locals, and Winsome's sexy Scottish veterinarian is making house calls--only not for the animals. But as summer slips into fall and Winsome prepares for its grand Oktoberfest celebration, beer isn't the only thing brewing. When the town's pub owner is killed in a freak accident, Megan suspects something sinister is afoot...

"After an injury forced her to leave the police department, Abigail Mackenzie started a second career as a farmer. Raising chickens, harvesting honey from her bee colony, and growing heirloom vegetables on her farmette in the beautiful Bay Area town of Las Flores, Abby has embraced all the benefits of a peaceful life. But when she attempts to deliver her trademark honey to local pastry chef Jean-Louis Bonheur and finds him dead in his shop, her old...

"Charlotte Finn never wanted to inherit the family's produce farm--much less plow a heap of money into it. Her plan is to hammer a great big FOR SALE sign into the farm's fallow furrows--but Charlotte's sunny hopes of a quick sale succumb to a killing frost when she finds a dead body entwined supine in the tomato vines. The poor man, it seems, was run through...with a pitchfork? Now, Charlotte is stuck with running the farm in the midst of a murder...

"When the sheriff arrests one of Lucy Resnick's best friends, the former reporter starts investigating. She finds a patchwork of clues that draws her deep into a web of small-town secrets. When the killer learns Lucy is on the trail, Lucy needs more than her reporting skills to save her friend--she needs a Christmas miracle."--

"In 1900, in the Flint Hills of Kansas, Jocelyn Belle Royal joins a mule drive with the aim of earning back her farm lost to the bank. Unexpectedly, her new companions--gentlemanly boss, Whit Hanley, and his kindly black partner, Sam Birdwhistle--leave her stranded on an abandoned ranch with the mules. At the last minute, Sam reveals that he and the boss once ran with an outlaw gang who could now be after them to avenge a longtime grudge. Lonely and...

In the tradition of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and The Secret Life of Bees, this luminous, heartfelt novel explores the tragedies and triumphs, the pleasures and sorrows of two women, Tee Wee and Icey, their families, and the white family that employs them as cook and housekeeper on a tenant farm in rural Mississippi.
Though the women are as different as water and wine—Icey is feisty, hot-tempered, and impulsive,...