In this journey of discovery, John Micklewright travels the slow way, on foot, on paths, tracks and byways from the Channel to the Alps – from the coast of Normandy to the flanks of Mont Blanc. The Opening Country is a beautifully written account of his progress through the French countryside, an evocative patchwork of landscape, nature, history, literature, film, and – drawing on his father’s diaries that stretch back to the 1930s – of memoir. Always curious, absorbing all around him, ready on a whim to divert from his chosen route as he heads unhurriedly southwards. The natural world unfolds as spring turns to summer with surprises of bird song and butterflies, against a constant background of reminders of the economic and social story of rural France and of wars past. The result is an engrossing record of a classic long-distance walk through Britain’s nearest continental neighbour. The Opening Country is a book to fire the imagination – a call to travel slowly, to open eyes and ears, to discover and explore.

Open Country, Iowa links anthropology and history in a woman's perspective on the changing social patterns of rural Iowa communities. Using life stories which she has collected, Deborah Fink explores the experiences of today's women. She traces them to past influences, beginning with the time of the first settlers, and shows how family, religion, and work have changed over the years. Her interpretation of social patterns as determined by the history of national politics, economics, kinship, and community culture, call into question some common understandings about the traditional role of women and about changes initiated by World War II.

Heir Conditioning at Open Country shares an autobiography that is a true, Camelot-like tale—a dramatic story of inheritance featuring a Mordred, a Morgan le Fay, and later, thankfully, a Sir Galahad who saved the day in the final hour. Russell Hunter and two of his cousins were left the contents of a twenty-nine-room mansion that had been closed up for twenty years. It had belonged to his cousin Margy’s very wealthy family. Hunter had known the estate as a child when the family was still wealthy and was both grieved and appalled to find out what had become of the home he once knew and loved. When he and his cousins opened the house, they discovered that the contents ran the gamut from pure trash to ancestral dresses, china, silver, glass, and furniture dating from the eighteenth century. As they worked their way through the contents, trying to determine how best to handle them, one of the heirs, in the style of Morgan le Fay, became very greedy about the value of the house’s contents; she attempted to dominate the sale process so that she profited more than the others. The trio of cousins was saved by the Sir Galahad figure who managed the house sale—from which all of the heirs benefited equally.

Love, lies, and the perils of passion unfold in the second western romance in Kaki Warner's Blood Rose Trilogy... Hank Wilkins doesn’t remember the train wreck that he barely survived—and he certainly doesn't remember getting married. Still, honor demands he take Molly McFarlane and her niece and nephew home to his ranch in New Mexico Territory, where his new wife is quickly caught up in the boisterous Wilkins family. Caught in a desperate situation, Molly told a lie to ensure the futures of her sister’s children—children she knows little about caring for. She knows even less about caring for a man, especially silent, brooding types like Hank. But even as Molly and Hank discover each other, the spectre of the truth of Molly’s past threatens to tear their newly formed family apart...