Farm Memoir

The once idyllic coastal plain of North Carolina is home to a close-knit, rural community that for more than a generation has battled the polluting practices of large-scale farming taking place in its own backyard. After years of frustration and futility, an impassioned cadre of local residents, led by a team of intrepid and dedicated lawyers, filed a lawsuit against one of the world’s most powerful companies—and, miraculously, they won. Wastelands takes us into a legal battle over the future of America’s farmland and the lives of the people who found the courage to fight.

Nowhere is there another lab like Dr. Bill Bass's: on a hillside in Tennessee, human bodies decompose in the open air, aided by insects, bacteria and birds, unhindered by coffins or mausoleums. At the "Body Farm," nature takes its course, with corpses buried in shallow graves, submerged in water, concealed beneath slabs of concrete, locked in trunks of cars. As stand-ins for murder victims, they serve the needs of science, and the cause of justice.

From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes a gripping new work of narrative nonfiction telling the forgotten story of the mass killing of eleven Black farmhands on a Georgia plantation in the spring of 1921—a crime which exposed for the nation the existence of the “peonage system,” a form of legal enslavement established after the Civil War across the American South.

The Horrors of Fox Hollow Farm provides detailed insights from the original criminal investigation as well as the perspectives of the man who survived Herb's attempt on his life. This chilling book also features actual supernatural evidence - from EVPs and psychic confirmations to first-hand accounts of the disembodied hands and voices that regularly manifest on the estate.

Jim May grew up in the 1950's, among farm people who had lived along Illinois's Nippersink Creek for generations. Stories told around the kitchen tables, front porches, and horse-trading barns brought laughs, inspired love, and helped ease the sometimes tragic turn of life's events. Speaking in the familiar voice of a longtime neighbor, May shares humorous and affecting events, as well as his Chicago Emmy Award winning tribute to his father, "A Bell for Shorty".

Today he is known as Dr. Q, an internationally renowned neurosurgeon and neuroscientist who leads cutting-edge research to cure brain cancer. But not too long ago, he was Freddy, a 19-year-old undocumented migrant worker toiling in the fields of Central California. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa tells his amazing life story - from his impoverished childhood in the tiny village of Palaco, Mexico, to his harrowing border crossing and his transformation from illegal immigrant to American citizen and gifted student at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard Medical School.

Roseanne Barr is a force of nature. Whether taking the sitcom world by storm, challenging accepted social norms, or battling the wild pigs inhabiting her nut farm in Hawaii, she is not to be trifled with. In this audiobook, Roseanne unleashes her razor-sharp observations on hypocrisy, hubris, and self-perpetuating institutions of questionable value - as well as menopause, pharmaceuticals, and her grandkids. And she's as controversial, original, and funny as ever.

Hop aboard a hippie bus and journey with 300 New Age settlers on their way to Tennessee to begin a new life and a new lifestyle, a meaningful lifestyle the world can afford - to live collectively, build a town and live simple, live close to nature - a remarkable experiment in collective living as thousands of high-minded people with heart join forces, pool resources, and attempt to create a gracious, meaningful, sustainable lifestyle.

An irreverent and illuminating journey through a day in the life of the affectionately named Trauma Farm, with numerous side trips into the natural history of farming. Beginning naked in darkness, Brian Brett moves from the tending of livestock, poultry, orchards, gardens, machinery, and fields to the social intricacies of rural communities and, finally, to an encounter with a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical farm field.

Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter had their lives turned upside down when they adopted their pig-daughter Esther - the so-called micro pig who turned out to be a full-sized commercial pig growing to a whopping 600 pounds - as they describe in their best-selling memoir Esther the Wonder Pig. Told with joy and humor and filled with delicious Esther-approved recipes dispersed throughout the book, this charming memoir captures an emotional journey of one little family advocating for animals everywhere.

The long pilgrimage of LeRoy Chatfield weaves its way through multiple collective projects designed to better the condition of the marginalized and forgotten. From the cloisters of the Christian Brothers and the halls of secondary education to the fields of Central California and the streets of Sacramento, Chatfield's story reveals a fierce commitment to those who were denied the promises of the American dream. Chatfield recounts his childhood, explains the social issues that have played a significant role in his life and work, and uncovers the lack of justice he saw too frequently.

On 7 August 1985, Nevill and June Bamber, their daughter, Sheila, and her two young sons, Nicholas and Daniel, were discovered shot to death at White House Farm in Essex. The murder weapon was found on Sheila's body; a Bible lay at her side. All the windows and doors of the farmhouse were secure, and the Bambers' son, 24-year-old Jeremy, had alerted police after apparently receiving a phone call from his father, who told him Sheila had 'gone berserk' with the gun. It seemed a straightforward case of murder-suicide, but a dramatic turn of events was to disprove the police's theory.

In Laughing at Myself: My Education in Congress, on the Farm, and at the Movies, Dan Glickman tells his story of a classical family background, religious heritage, and "Midwestern-nice" roots, and how it led to a long and successful career in public service. Dan has successfully navigated the worlds of congressional politics, cabinet-level administration, and the entertainment industry and offers listeners the many tricks of the trade he has learned over the years.

In the fall of 1994, Erich Baumeister (13), was playing in a wooded area of his family’s estate, when he stumbled across a partially buried human skeleton. He presented the disturbing finding to his mother, Julie, who inquired about the skull to her husband, Herb. He told her that the skeleton belonged to his late father, an anesthesiologist. Astonishingly, Julie believed him. In You Think You Know Me, best-selling author Ryan Green assumes the role of Herb Baumeister and attempts to fill in the blanks on one of Indiana’s most mysterious serial killers.

The youngest of her parents’ combined 21 children, Sarah Frey grew up on a struggling farm in southern Illinois, often having to grow, catch, or hunt her own dinner alongside her brothers. She spent much of her early childhood dreaming of running away to the big city - or really anywhere with central heating. At 15, she moved out of her family home and started her own fresh produce delivery business with nothing more than an old pickup truck. Two years later, when the family farm faced inevitable foreclosure, Frey gave up on her dreams of escape and took over the farm.

Raised in a primitive one-room farmhouse with no indoor plumbing, the fourth of five children, Catherine Marenghi begins her life in poverty and isolation. She leaves home at the age of 17. A decade later, she is a successful journalist with the means to buy her family their first decent house. But the past will not be put to rest so easily. Catherine unravels a web of long-buried family secrets, and a terrible betrayal that robbed her family of the home that was rightfully theirs. And she finally uncovers the story her parents never shared: the gladiolus farm that was once their dream.

Now raising their four-year-old daughter, Indiana, alone, after Joey’s passing, Rory Feek digs deeper into the soil of his life and the unusual choices he and his wife, Joey, made together and the ones he’s making now to lead his family into the future. When Feek and his older daughters moved into a run-down farmhouse almost 20 years ago, he had no idea of the almost fairy-tale love story that was going to unfold on that small piece of Tennessee land. He takes listeners on his incredible journey from heartbreak to hope and, ultimately, the kind of healing that comes only through faith.

When Rosanne and her husband left city life for the Cornwall idyll they knew little of farming, the seasons and milking, but over time they found their way, rising to each new challenge and embracing all that the land gave them. Growing Goats and Girls lovingly and invitingly charts the rural, hardworking and joyfully haphazard lives of Rosanne and her husband as they escape London to live off the land.

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Douglas Rogers is the son of White farmers living through that country's long and tense transition from postcolonial rule. He escaped the dull future mapped out for him by his parents for one of adventure and excitement in Europe and the United States. But when Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe launched his violent program to reclaim White-owned land and Rogers' parents were caught in the cross fire, everything changed.

Farming has been in John Connell's family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father's footsteps. Until, one winter, after more than a decade away, he finds himself back on the farm. Connell records the hypnotic rhythm of the farming day - cleaning the barns, caring for the herd, tending to sickly lambs, helping the cows give birth. Alongside the routine events, there are the unforeseen moments when things go wrong: when a calf fails to thrive, when a sheep goes missing, when an argument between father and son erupts and things are said that cannot be unsaid.