A Hudson Valley gardener chronicles the obsession that spiraled from a simple kitchen garden to 22 terraces of Brandywine tomatoes, frisée, and heirloom orchard trees. Recently featured on "Good Morning Hudson Valley," Alexander tilts at woodchucks and Japanese beetles with quixotic fervor and comic finesse. A Book Sense Pick.

If Alexander scares you off growing tomatoes, buy them from Greenmarket demigod Keith Stewart. The Orange County organic farmer's graceful essays depict many facets of farm life, from barn swallows to USDA regulations, sustainable agriculture, mesclun mix, and the mythos of tractors. Bacarella's prints have the hand-hewn beauty of weathered wood.

Drawing on her French and Chinese lineage, her American upbringing and her extensive travels throughout Asia, Stone Ridge resident Corinne Trang is uniquely positioned to bring insight and originality to the grill. She deftly plays the five flavor notes of Asian cooking—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and spicy—offering simple menus that pair one grilled dish with a couple of easy sides.

In the fourth updated edition of this bestselling diet phenomenon, published by Little-Engine-That-Could local publishers Big Apple Vision, De Lennart expands her crusade to eliminate yo-yo dieting and change the way Americans eat. As the press release says, "With the BioChemical A&B Method people will become a 'big fat winner.'"

In the wastes of Montana, a teenager finds a fossil like no other. This mysterious object will lead a team where no paleontologist has gone before: Mars. New York Times bestselling author Flint and Hudson Valley writer Spoor explore "the biggest badlands in the solar system" in this peerlessly original saga of spaceships and sauropods.