I had been growing food on a small plot in the corner of the farm for a couple of summers when my Aunt Marie told me she was ready to call it quits.

These events happened a while back, when the war was not quite a war, more a prelude to a war. Their army was called a guerrilla force. Our army was called a Military Assistance Command.

Excerpted from a letter to William Blackburn written July 23, 1949 from Valley Cottage, N.Y. Mr. Blackburn was a professor at Duke and an early mentor of William Styron’s.

Excerpted from Bountiful: A History of the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society and the Livestock Show and Fair, by Susan Klein, with photographs by Alan Brigish (Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society, 2012).

This excerpt is taken from chapter 9 which tells the story of the midway and how it came to play an integral part of the annual Island tradition.

“My favorite was the Scrambler! It was really fun!”

— Dylan Biggs, 7 years of age

The prolific and critically-acclaimed Island author Ward Just has a new novel, Exiles in the Garden, which he will sign and discuss tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven.

“There is a Light to Starboard, Sir, right off our lee bow!”, A Medley of Lighthouse Sketches, by Tom Hale, 2010, Tisbury Printer, 60-pages, 28 illustrations. $19.95.

THE BEE BALM MURDERS: A Martha’s Vineyard Mystery. By Cynthia Riggs. Minotaur Books, 2011. 304 pages. $24.99 hardcover.

Excerpted from The Chappy Ferry Book: Back and Forth Between Two Worlds, 527 Feet Apart, by Tom Dunlop, with photographs by Alison Shaw and a short film on DVD by John Wilson (Vineyard Stories, 2012).

This excerpt is taken from chapter five which tells the story of James H. Yates of Edgartown, who owned the ferry from 1920 to 1929. He was the last man to run the Chappy ferry as a rowboat.

Folks on both sides of the harbor love Jimmy Yates. But folks on the Chappaquiddick side loathe the ferry Jimmy Yates runs.