Farm House Memoir

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.

A touching memoir filled with food, friendships, and scenes of Italy, Pinch Me is ultimately a celebration of love, of learning to see the world, as well as oneself, through a different window, and of the powerful joy that comes from building a dream.

Alexandra Morton has been called "the Jane Goodall of Canada" because of her passionate thirty-year fight to save British Columbia's wild salmon. Her account of that fight is both inspiring in its own right and a roadmap of resistance.

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.

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.

British mother Rosie Ayliffe thought her 21-year-old daughter, Mia, would be safe travelling around Australia on a gap year. But Mia wanted to extend her visa and in order to do that needed to find 88 days of work on a farm - a requirement that would lead to catastrophic events. Four short days after Mia moved to a hostel in Queensland to take a job on a sugarcane farm, she was brutally murdered.

My book is the story of my life. On the Sidelines of History: My Life's Journey from the Farm House to the White House and Back contains extensive information about a Kansas farm boy and his experiences and over 90 years of life. These experiences include a 22-year career in the United States Air Force, a three-and-a-half-year tour as the deputy commander of the White House Communications Agency in Washington, DC, extensive public service with the state of Kansas including secretary of agriculture, secretary of commerce, and more.

In 1985, the shocking murder of a family of five in a quiet country house in Essex rocked the nation. The victims were Nevill and June Bamber; their adopted daughter Sheila Caffell, divorced from her husband Colin; and Sheila and Colin's twin sons, Nicholas and Daniel. Only one survivor remained: the Bambers' other adopted child, Jeremy Bamber. Following his lead, the police - and later the press - blamed the murders on Sheila, who, so the story went, then committed suicide.

It’s the summer of 2005, and Mardi Jo Link’s dream of living the simple life has unraveled into debt, heartbreak, and perpetually ragged cuticles. She and her husband of nineteen years have just called it quits, leaving her with serious cash-flow problems and a looming divorce. More broke than ever, Link makes a seemingly impossible resolution: to hang on to her century-old farmhouse in northern Michigan and continue to raise her three boys on well water and wood chopping and dirt. Armed with an unfailing sense of humor and three resolute accomplices, Link confronts blizzards and foxes, learns about Zen divorce and the best way to butcher a hog, dominates a zucchini-growing contest and wins a year’s supply of local bread, masters the art of bargain cooking, wrangles rampaging poultry, and withstands any blow to her pride in order to preserve the life she wants.

Ever since that terrible night in January 1931, when the body of Julia Wallace was found in her Liverpool home, her head crushed by violent blows, the identity of her killer has remained a mystery. Her husband, William, was accused, tried, convicted and sentenced to hang for murder, but he was then acquitted in a sensational appeal court judgement. Yet the police refused to reopen their investigation.

Jake Keiser was living the life in Tampa, Florida, running a high-powered PR firm and juggling drink dates, shopping sprees, and charity galas. But at age thirty-eight, following a failed marriage, a series of miscarriages, and a still-blistering breakup, she began to suffer from extreme anxiety. Hit with the realization that no amount of Botox could fill the hole in her heart, she decided to make the impulse purchase of a lifetime and bought a farm in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi.