Laura Tillman is an award-winning writer and freelance journalist. Her first book is
The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts: Murder and Memory in an American City. One of the author's nine great unconventional true crime books, as shared at
Publishers Weekly:
The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
This chronicle of obsession began with a New Yorker piece about orchid-poacher John Laroche. The book that followed is a meditation on passion, Florida, and man's relationship with nature. Moving far beyond the initial hook of orchid-theft, Orlean writes, "Sometimes this kind of story turns out to be something more, some glimpse of life that expands like those Japanese paper balls you drop in water and then after a moment they bloom into flowers, and the flower is so marvelous that you can't believe there was a time when all you saw in front of you was a paper ball and a glass of water." She delivers on that promise, bringing readers the treasures she found in Florida's swampland.
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the other entries on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
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