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‘The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century,’ by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Johnson unspools an utterly fascinating and “complex tale of greed, deception and ornithological sabotage” about a young flutist named Edwin Rist, who in 2009 broke into a British natural history museum and stole hundreds of preserved bird skins. “He intended to fence the birds’ extravagantly colored plumage at high prices to fellow aficionados in hopes of raising enough cash to support both his musical career and his parents’ struggling Labradoodle-breeding business in the Hudson Valley,” wrote our reviewer, Joshua Hammer.

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Over a five-month period starting in 2012, 67 fires were set across an isolated stretch of Virginia. A mechanic eventually took responsibility, but solving the mystery isn’t what makes this book so compelling: It’s the back story of an improbable outlaw and his fiancée, who quickly emerges as one of the most memorable femme fatales in recent true-crime cases. The story, our critic Jennifer Senior wrote, “has all the elements of a lively crime procedural: courtroom drama, forensic trivia, toothsome gossip, vexed sex.”

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‘The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession,’ by Susan Orlean

The veteran reporter and bibliophile (don’t miss her latest, “The Library Book”) introduces readers to John Laroche, a 36-year-old who became so obsessed with orchids, he hired himself out to the Seminole tribe of Florida to set up a plant nursery and propagation laboratory on the tribe’s reservation — and hatched a scheme that would benefit the Seminoles, the world and himself. Our reviewer wrote: “In Ms. Orlean’s skillful handling, her orchid story turns out to be distinctly ‘something more.’ … She writes that orchids appeal to people because they are both smart and sexy: smart in their ability to survive; sexy in their look and feel. She describes the lengths to which collectors have gone to acquire them. She introduces us to people who deal in them, steal them, do anything but kill for them.”

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‘Strange Piece of Paradise,’ by Terri Jentz

In 1977, Terri Jentz and her college roommate set out on a cross country bike trip. Seven days into their 4,200-mile journey, the two were camping at a state park in Cline Falls, Ore., when a man in a truck brutally attacked them — first with his truck, then with an ax. “Strange Piece of Paradise” is Jentz’s memoir of her own survival. Our reviewer wrote: “She is condemning American culture, one of easy violence that glorifies ‘the badass outlaw,’ that values ‘self-gratification, impulsivity and irresponsibility, and rewards preening narcissism.’ She is condemning violence against women and a society-wide indifference toward its ubiquity, what she calls our ‘passive complicity.’ … But Jentz keeps the editorializing to a minimum, and her soapbox is, for the most part, more of an easy chair. I felt a bit hopeless, but I never felt harangued.”