Susan Orlean

Describes the life and times of John Laroche, a plant smuggler and orchid thief, and the eccentric world of Florida's obsessed collectors of rare plants

The Orchid Thief

Susan Orlean’s bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is “a sheer delight…as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library” (USA TODAY)—a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries. “Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book” (The Washington Post). On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a “delightful…reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in America” (New York magazine) that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In the “exquisitely written, consistently entertaining” (The New York Times) The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries; brings each department of the library to vivid life; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. “A book lover’s dream…an ambitiously researched, elegantly written book that serves as a portal into a place of history, drama, culture, and stories” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country.

The Library Book

Susan Orlean—the beloved New Yorker staff writer hailed as “a national treasure” by The Washington Post and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Library Book—gathers a lifetime of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about animals. “How we interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets, and naturalists for ages,” writes Susan Orlean. Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book called Herbert the Near-Sighted Pigeon, she’s been drawn to stories about how we live with animals, and how they abide by us. Now, in On Animals, she examines animal-human relationships through the compelling tales she has written over the course of her celebrated career. These stories consider a range of creatures—the household pets we dote on, the animals we raise to end up as meat on our plates, the creatures who could eat us for dinner, the various tamed and untamed animals we share our planet with who are central to human life. In her own backyard, Orlean discovers the delights of keeping chickens. In a different backyard, in New Jersey, she meets a woman who has twenty-three pet tigers—something none of her neighbors knew about until one of the tigers escapes. In Iceland, the world’s most famous whale resists the efforts to set him free; in Morocco, the world’s hardest-working donkeys find respite at a special clinic. We meet a show dog and a lost dog and a pigeon who knows exactly how to get home. Equal parts delightful and profound, enriched by Orlean’s stylish prose and precise research, these stories celebrate the meaningful cross-species connections that grace our collective existence.

On Animals

Chronicles the rise of the iconic German shepherd character while sharing the stories of the real WWI dog and the canine performer in the 1950s television show, and explores Rin Tin Tin's relevance in the military and popular culture.

The Life and the Legend

Rin Tin Tin

The author offers profiles of some of the colorful people she has encountered, from the first female Spanish matador to the African king who drives a New York City cab.

My Encounters with Extraordinary People

The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup

The best-selling author of The Orchid Thief presents a selection of her intriguing travel essays, recounting her adventures in a variety of exotic locales and global subcultures, from the African music scene in Paris to the World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere

My Kind of Place

A close-up look at what Americans do on Saturday nights draws on travels throughout the country to describe classic weekend situations, types of people, places and communities, entertainment patterns, and other topics

Saturday Night

historia de un millon de libros quemados y del hombre que encendió la cerilla

La biblioteca en llamas

Robert Atwan

Compiles the best literary essays of the year originally published in American periodicals

The Best American Essays 2005

Kütüphanelerin bilinmeyen dünyası

Animalish

Library Book

Mark Vonnegut

Kim Barnes

Paul Lisicky

M. J. Fievre

M. Evelina Galang

Jan Becker

Lori Jakiela

Dan Wakefield

Tabitha Blankenbiller

Elizabeth Dalton

Rebecca Cook

Elmaz Abinader

Christine Butterworth-McDermott

Andrea Askowitz

Lisbeth Davidow

Dinty Moore

Russell Reece

Sliver of Stone magazine presents its first volume of collected nonfiction. From the mouth of a Seattle whale to a Nordstrom's swimsuit department, from an Idaho fundamentalist church to a fathomless Florida lake, the fifteen stories in ALL THAT GLITTERS recount lives and identities unsettled by impending doom. Also included are four remarkable interviews with award-winning nonfiction writers, including Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin."Fresh, fierce, and enlightening, All That Glitters is a find. The talented nonfiction writers in this collection invite us along on the complicated, sometimes scary, but irresistible pursuit of truth." (Lynne Barrett, author of Magpies and The Secret Names of Women)

A Sliver of Stone Nonfiction Anthology

All That Glitters

A Gentle Reign

The American Man at Age 10

Provides a humorous view of aspects of New England life such as baked beans, candlepins, Filene's Basement, preppies, and Harvard Square

And Other Things That Make New England New England

Red Sox and Bluefish

Unabridged Selections from My Kind of Place:

While walking to school, lugging a heavy backpack through New York City one morning, a disgruntled child questions why babies are so lazy, spending their days on useless activities such as napping and babbling rather than getting jobs.

Lazy little loafers

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion. In this new edition, coming fifteen years after its initial publication and twenty years after she first met the “orchid thief,” Orlean revisits this unforgettable world, and the route by which it was brought to the screen in the film Adaptation, in a new retrospective essay. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. Praise for The Orchid Thief “Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean’s] gifts in full bloom.”—The New York Times Book Review “Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.”—Los Angeles Times “Orlean’s snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose . . . is fast becoming one of our national treasures.”—The Washington Post Book World “Orlean’s gifts [are] her ear for the self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her Didion-like deftness in description.”—Boston Sunday Globe “A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great.”—The Wall Street Journal

Susan Orlean

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