Susan Orlean

"Susan Orlean reopens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution--our libraries"--

One of the most acclaimed nonfiction books of 2011, Susan Orlean's New York Times bestseller Rin Tin Tin is an unforgettable book about the mutual devotion between one man and one dog. He believed the dog was immortal. So begins Susan Orlean's sweeping, powerfully moving account of Rin Tin Tin's journey from abandoned puppy to movie star and international icon. Spanning almost one hundred years of history, from the dog's improbable discovery on a...

Twenty years ago, before she wrote The Orchid Thief or was hailed as a national treasure. Susan Orlean was a journalist with a question: What makes Saturday night so special? To answer it, she embarked on a remarkable journey across the country and spent the evening with all sorts of people in all sorts of places-hipsters in Los Angeles, car cruisers in small-town Indiana, coeds in Boston, the homeless in New York, a lounge band in Portland, quinceañera...

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.

John Laroche, an obsessed Florida plant dealer, willing to go to any lengths to steal rare and protected wild orchids and clone them and all for a tidy profit. But the morality of Laroche's actions do not drive the narrative of Orleans' strange, compelling, and hilarious book. She is much more interested in the spectacle this unusual man creates through his actions, including one of the oddest legal controversies in recent memory, which brought together...

"Extraordinary stories of crime, passion, and adventure from The Atavist magazine, the trailblazing leader in longform narrative writing. Since its founding in 2011, The Atavist has garnered an unprecedented eight National Magazine Award nominations and was the first all-digital publication to win in feature writing. This collection presents the finest examples of a new kind of nonfiction storytelling as practiced by a young generation of longform...

A collection of captivating and thought-provoking photographs by award-winning photographer Melissa Ann Pinney that contemplate the essence of duality in our relationships and in the world that surrounds us. Pinney, whose work is in the permanent collections of dozens of American museums, including the Metropolitan, MoMA, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Getty, aims her lens at pairs--mostly, but not always human--that display or imply elusive...

Ann-Marie, a big-wave surfer on the North Shore of Oahu, drives to make a comeback after nearly drowning in a surfing competition. Her life becomes more complicated by her romance with a handsome football player. Ann-Marie and her surfer buddies work as maids at a posh resort and share a beach shack with Anne-Marie's wayward young sister. Ann-Marie struggles between her need to prove herself and her desire to take the easy way out.