I started reading this book after a bike ride around Berlin, N.H. I saw 'boom piers' and wondered what they were. In this book, Robert Pike, who as a youth worked in the woods and on the rivers, writes vividly, knowedgeably, and often humorously of every detail of lumbering. He describes the daily life of the loggers, showing how the various specialists worked and what life in the camps was like. He brings the reader right into the woods, smelling the tangy, newly cut timber, hearing the boom of the falling trees.

Abby has been estranged from the family farm since her rebellious mother ran off with her when she was a small child. Kit is a burned out New York stockbroker who's down on his luck. But that's all about to change, now that he and Abby have converged on the farm just in time to help Corrie and Fee, two old cheesemakers in a time of need. Full of delightful and quirky characters--from dairy cows who only give their best product to pregnant, vegetarian teens to an odd collection of whiskey-soaked men and broken-hearted women who find refuge under Corrie and Fee's roof--BLESSED ARE THE CHEESEMAKERS is an irresistible tale about taking life's spilled milk and turning it into the best cheese in the world.

In the twilight of the Civil War, a Vermont soldier named Norman Pelham, battle-wounded and near death, is found by Leah, a slave running from a different hell. After Leah nurses him back to health, Norman brings her to his family homestead in Randolph as his wife, and there they begin a family that will be shaped by their passionate devotion to each other and the consequences of their union.

Spanning the post-Civil War era to the edge of the Great Depression, In The Fall is a richly layered rendering of a rapidly evolving America from life on the farm, through the final years of Prohibition and bootlegging, to the advent of modern times. In sentences that roll with a grave, brooding beauty, Jeffrey Lent illumines the ineluctable connections that exist between black and white, North and South, past and present, as well as the violent collisions they give rise to.

A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller A Book Sense Selection "Extraordinary . . . One quickly runs out of superlatives when praising this book." -- Gerard DeGroot, Christian Science Monitor From the author of the widely acclaimed King Leopold's Ghost comes the taut, gripping account of one of the most brilliantly organized social justice campaigns in history -- the fight to free the slaves of the British Empire. In early 1787, twelve men -- a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery -- came together in a London printing shop and began the world's first grass-roots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens' movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft chronicle of this groundbreaking antislavery crusade and its powerful enemies, Bury the Chains gives a little-celebrated human rights watershed its due at last.