If you’ve finished tearing through all seven episodes of the hit show “Tiger King” and you’re looking for more, we’ve got some reading suggestions.Image‘Geek Love,’ by Katherine DunnIn Dunn’s novel — which still sells briskly more than 30 years after its publication — Aloysius Binewski and his wife, Crystal Lil, run a carnival freak show stocked with their own children, all born with deformities thanks to their parents’ intentional experimentation “with illicit and prescription drugs, insecticides, and eventually radioisotopes.” There’s Arturo, or Aqua Boy, born with flippers instead of arms and legs; the conjoined twins Iphigenia and Electra; and Olympia, an albino hunchback. “America’s sentimental attachment to geeks is the dark side of its sentimental attachment to Mom and apple pie,” Stephen Dobyns wrote in his review. “That geekiness — the comic exploration of the peculiar as an end in itself — is what gives ‘Geek Love’ its main success.”Image‘The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird,’ by Joshua HammerThis mesmerizing true-crime saga burrows into the mind of Jeffrey Lendrum, a wild-bird trafficker and smuggler who takes unfathomable risks, like dangling 700 feet from a helicopter to swipe eggs from gyrfalcon nests. “Lendrum’s own demons run deeper than money or family,” Suzanne Joinson wrote in her review. “They spiral into everything that is wrong with humanity’s relationship with the natural world: ownership, possession, domination, an endless risk-seeking, thrill-hunting death drive and profound betrayal.”Image‘Swamplandia!,’ by Karen Russell“This is a novel about alligator wrestlers, a balding brown bear named Judy Garland, a Bird Man specializing in buzzard removal, a pair of dueling Florida theme parks, rampaging melaleuca trees, a Ouija board and the dead but still flirtatious Louis Thanksgiving,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review. “Sound appealing? No, it does not. But wait. Ms. Russell knows how to use bizarre ingredients to absolutely irresistible effect.”Image‘The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers,’ by Bryan ChristyOur reviewer summed it up like this: “Smugglers with lizards stuffed in their underwear waltzing through customs in American airports; designers breeding large pythons into dazzling colors and selling them as living art for as much as $85,000 — these and other eye-popping details are plentiful in ‘The Lizard King,’ Bryan Christy’s lively first book.” Christy, a former attorney, reports on the evolution of laws and treaties governing the reptile trade and highlights the work of “underappreciated, underfinanced heroes fighting wildlife crime.”Image‘The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century,’ by Kirk Wallace JohnsonJohnson 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.Image‘American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land,’ by Monica HesseOver 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.”Image‘The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession,’ by Susan OrleanThe 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.”Image‘Strange Piece of Paradise,’ by Terri JentzIn 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.”Image‘Tooth and Claw,’ by T. Coraghessan BoyleThe title of this short-story collection tells you everything you need to know: Marriages are threatened by a batty neighborhood biologist; another man’s paradise in Florida is hit by waves of plagues. And yes, exotic animals do make an appearance — one character’s bedroom is sprayed with raw meat thanks to an African lynx. In many of these comic tales, our reviewer wrote, Boyle “delivers a hint of the sublime, that sensation of brushing against the pelt of something wild and unfathomable.”Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. More
