A century of industrialization has left our food system riddled with problems, yet for solutions we look to nutritionists and government agencies, scientists and chefs. Lisa M. Hamilton asks: Why not look to the people who grow our food? Hamilton makes this vital inquiry through the stories of three unconventional farmers: an African-American dairyman in Texas who plays David to the Goliath of agribusiness corporations; a tenth-generation rancher in New Mexico struggling to restore agriculture as a pillar of his crumbling community; and a modern pioneer family in North Dakota who is breeding new varieties of plants to face the future’s double threat: Monsanto and global warming. Threads of history and discussion weave through the tales, exploring how farmers have been pushed to the margins of agriculture and transformed from leaders to laborers.

“The extraordinary farmers . . . in Deeply Rooted embody the future of American agriculture.” — Alice Waters

By turns funny and sad, the linked stories in Tracy Winn’s debut collection, Mrs. Somebody Somebody intersect in surprising ways. Winn draws us into the last sixty years of an old mill town where her unforgettable characters are down on their luck, but making the most of it. The man-crazy young mill worker of the title story forms an unexpected friendship with a lesbian labor organizer; a plucky immigrant child finds faith that her sister will return safely from Iraq; and a secretive old bookie has reason to hide a fragment of bone in his pocket. Connecting them all is the decidedly upper-class Burroughs family whose stately home holds years of unspoken compromise and regret. In clean, sensuous prose, Winn delivers the truths of our experience, unfolding these all-too-human lives, showing how little race, class and age matter when it comes to the grace that connects us all.

“Mrs. Somebody Somebody is rich in surprises and moments of unlikely beauty. A splendid debut.” - Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street

The Odyssey Crime Club will discuss Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler. This first novel in a riveting new mystery series introduces two cranky but brilliant old detectives whose lifelong friendship was forged solving crimes for the London Police Department's Peculiar Crimes Unit. This month’s selection is discounted 20%

By the acclaimed author of The Highest Tide comes a story of contrary destinies further complicated by the border that separates them. Six foot eight and severely dyslexic, Brandon Vanderkool has always had an unusual perspective—which comes in handy once his father pushes him off their dairy farm and into the Border Patrol. Uncomfortable in this uniformed role, he indulges his passion for bird-watching and often finds not only an astonishing variety of species but also a great many smugglers hauling pot into Washington State from Canada. Rich in characters contending with a swiftly changing world and their own elusive hopes and dreams, Border Songs is at once comic and tender—a riveting portrait of a distinctive community, an extraordinary love story and fiction of the highest order.

“Jim Lynch’s new novel reads as an antidote to the 21st century: a kind of metaphorical insistence on hope and simplicity and art in the face of a surrounding storm.  Border Songs is a quietly ambitious book and it just gets better as it rises to the final satisfying image.” – Kent Haruf

The Odyssey Bookshop’s Open Fiction Book Group will discuss Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie. Sweeping in scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of disasters eluded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

In The Whole-Body Approach to Osteoporosis, nutrition and bone health expert Keith McCormick offers a holistic, ten-step approach to help readers increase bone density and bone flexibility, reduce the risk of fracture, and engage in more active and healthy lifestyles.

“…the most updated, advanced, and comprehensive approach to bone health regeneration available today.” -- Susan E. Brown, Ph.D., author of Better Bones, Better Body

The story of the Woodstock festival begins with Michael Lang, a kid out of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, who liked to smoke a joint and listen to jazz and who eventually found his way to Florida, where he opened a head shop and produced his first festival—Miami Pop, featuring Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and others. In the late sixties, after settling in Woodstock, he began to envision a music and arts festival where folks could come and stay for a few days amid the rural beauty of upstate New York. The idea crystallized when Lang talked it over with Artie Kornfeld, a songwriter and A & R man, and with two other young men they formed Woodstock Ventures. They booked talent, from Janis Joplin and The Who to the virtually unknown Santana and Crosby, Stills and Nash; won over agents and promoters; brought in the Hog Farm commune to set up campgrounds; hired a peacekeeping force; took on fleets of volunteers; appeased the Yippies; and were, at one point, run out of town only to find another site weeks before the festival. On the ground with the talent, the townspeople, and his handpicked crew, Lang had a unique and panoramic perspective of the festival. Enhanced by interviews with others who were central to the making of the festival, The Road to Woodstock tells the story from inspiration to celebration, capturing all the magic, mayhem, and mud in between.

“Totally rocking...what elevates this book above the level of most rock memoirs is the inclusion of voices other than Lang's — including scenesters and key Woodstock players like Jimi Hendrix, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Jerry Garcia. Well-written, informative and tons of fun.” -- Kirkus Reviews

A spellbinding, beautifully written novel that moves between contemporary times and one of the most fascinating and disturbing periods in American history–the Salem witch trials. Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie’s grandmother’s abandoned home near Salem, she can’t refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest--to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge. Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the witch trials of the 1690s and a modern woman’s story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation.