Dick and James Strawbridge's Made at Home: Eggs and Poultry is the perfect book for anyone intending to embrace the Good Life. It describes how whether you have a large country garden or small city enclosure, keeping a couple of hens is essential for fresh eggs every day. The hardback covers everything you need to raise chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys for eggs and for eating, from the best housing to feeding and breeding. Among the recipes featured in the book are poached eggs, smoked eggs with beetroot, braised duck with peas and south-western fried chicken.

The Self-Sufficiency Collection can help you learn new skills and change the way you live. A collection of 12 diverse titles that could lead to life improvement, the books cover everything from weaving your own textiles to keeping bees and making cheese, soap and natural remedies. A brilliantly practical series that will help you master the basics of new activities in a very short space of time, each book contains colour illustrations and easy-to-follow instructions. You can either tackle one hobby at a time, or perhaps share the books out amongst your friends!

Written by Dick and James Strawbridge, both of whom are experts in the Good Life, Made at Home: Curing & Smoking is a guide to transforming fresh meats, fish, seafood and even eggs and cheese into flavoursome treats to share. Curing and smoking are two of the best ways to preserve and enjoy meats and these methods do not have to be out of reach of the home cook. From creating your own curing oven to smoking salmon, this is an enormously practical book that also offers simple instructions on brining, curing, drying and smoking fresh food, as well as dozens of fantastic recipes.

Make sure that your patch of land blossoms all year round with the RHS Allotment Journal. Filled with all the sage advice that you?d expect from the Royal Horticultural Society, this useful hardback is your ideal companion for a whole 12 months of allotmenteering. With plenty of space to add your own notes, plans and reminders, this informative book is filled with recommendations for planting and crop rotation, all on a month-by-month basis.

The ultimate guide to reducing your carbon footprint and leading a fulfilling, sustainable life, Self Sufficiency by Liz Wright is an invaluable hardback for those wanting to live in line with new 21st century ideals. Colourful and full of inspirational photography, this practical guide helps improve awareness of green issues and organic methods. Great for those city-dwellers who want to grow their own vegetable garden or equally for those who fancy going the whole hog and relocating to the country, this guide can help anyone live the natural life.

The Thrifty Forager sees the energetic and engaging Alys Fowler, presenter of BBC's Gardeners' World and the Edible Garden, showcase her favourite edibles and teach us to take a fresh look at foraging and encourage us to look closer to home and use the weeds in our garden and the trees in our streets. With amazing photographic identification and descriptions and tips on how to grow, prepare and eat plants, this paperback will give you the confidence to start identifying plants yourself. A forager's delight, the book also features innovative ideas for eating your local landscape - a fast-growing phenomenon that is fun, environmentally friendly and thrifty.

Create enticing habitats to attract birds and insects to a garden. This title presents 30 step-by-step, illustrated projects, with many suitable even for the novice. It includes specific information on habit requirements for different species. This is popular subject for woodworkers. For many years, people have enjoyed creating enticing habitats for birds and insects of all shapes and sizes. The most common of these are bird houses, which come in every conceivable shape and size. However in recent years, houses for insects have grown hugely in popularity as well. "Bird, Bee and Bug Houses" explains all you need to know to create the perfect habitat for each chosen species. The book covers materials needed to create the house, deciding on a location and choosing an appropriate design. In total, there are 30 projects to choose from, each with step-by-step illustrations to guide readers through the construction process.

The ultimate solution for treating annoying ailments such as bee stings and sciatica, Good Housekeeping: 1000 Home Remedies shows you how to put traditional methods to use within your own home. Utilising herbs, foodstuffs and a variety of kitchen staples and items that are often found lying around the home such as hairdryers and tennis balls, this vast and inspirational hardback full of handy remedies will help you relieve your own pains and stresses without so many troublesome trips to the chemists or the doctors.

A pair of books that are perfectly geared towards helping us discover a more self sufficient lifestyle, Foraging by David Squire and Natural Remedies by Melissa Corkhill demonstrate how we can find food and medicine on our doorsteps. Two attractive titles that are as functional as they are good to look at, each book contains useful advice for tracking down free and natural resources either to eat or use in medicines and tinctures. With easy-to-follow recipes for treating coughs, colds and other conditions, Corkhill’s book is extremely practical, whilst Squire’s guide contains handy advice on what natural ingredients we can and can’t eat, from mushrooms to seaweed.