Welcome back! We’re quickly approaching thirty editions of Get Rec’d! I can’t believe it! This was all Sarah’s idea. I’ve been so warmed by the responses and seeing your comments about books you’ve picked up through the site or books you really want to recommend and shout about.
Please keep ’em coming!
As usual, have you gotten any good book recs lately? Reading anything great that you want the community to know about?
The Feather Thief
This one is a go-to recommendation for people who like heists or want true crime without the graphic content.
A rollicking true-crime adventure and a thought-provoking exploration of the human drive to possess natural beauty for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief.
On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London’s Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin’s obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins–some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin’s, Alfred Russel Wallace, who’d risked everything to gather them–and escaped into the darkness.
Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man’s relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man’s destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.
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Killers of a Certain Age
I have handsold this one at the bookstore three times in the past few weeks. Some of our older customers are really getting a kick out of the plot description!
Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that’s their secret weapon.
They’ve spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they’re sixty years old, four women friends can’t just retire – it’s kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller by New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author Deanna Raybourn.
Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.
When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they’ve been marked for death.
Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They’re about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman—and a killer—of a certain age.
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The Soul of an Octopus
Sy Montgomery’s writing is really beautiful and one of the people I frequently gives recs to is doing some marine biology studies and wanted some great reading suggestions!
In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food.
Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.
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Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World
In terms of history recommendations, my own reading tastes skew toward micro or niche history topics. This is a great rec for any foodie in your life!
New York Times bestselling author William Alexander takes readers on the surprisingly twisty journey of the beloved tomato in this fascinating and erudite microhistory.
The tomato gets no respect. Never has. Lost in the dustbin of history for centuries, accused of being vile and poisonous, subjected to being picked hard-green and gassed, even used as a projectile, the poor tomato has become the avatar for our disaffection with industrial foods — while becoming the most popular vegetable in America (and, in fact, the world). Each summer, tomato festivals crop up across the country; the Heinz ketchup bottle, instantly recognizable, has earned a spot in the Smithsonian; and now the tomato is redefining the very nature of farming, moving from fields into climate-controlled mega-greenhouses the size of New England villages.
Supported by meticulous research and told in a lively, accessible voice, Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World seamlessly weaves travel, history, humor, and a little adventure (and misadventure) to follow the tomato’s trail through history. A fascinating story complete with heroes, con artists, conquistadors, and—no surprise—the Mafia, this book is a mouth-watering, informative, and entertaining guide to the food that has captured our hearts for generations.
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Ten Tomatoes looks quirky and fun!
Did you say heist?
I went to my local library searching for The Feather Thief. I found I had on my wish list another book by this author The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast.
I enjoyed both The Feather Thief and Killers of a Certain Age and would recommend them both.
**
I don’t yet see a sale post, but I want to mention that Thea Harrison’s Dragon Bound is $1.99 today for US kindle readers.
Some excellent and very timely recs today, Amanda! I’m already thinking all of these have holiday gift potential for certain people in my life. I remember hearing the story of The Feather Thief a few years ago on a Strange History podcast; it hadn’t been solved at the time, so I’ll be interested to finally read the conclusion!
Recently finished Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li, it was such a great heist book. I really appreciated the focus on how art is acquired and the narratives we tell about how art ends up in museums. Also the characters were interesting and complex, and while POV shifting between a cast of characters is usually not something I love in a book, it was well done here. As a side note, if you’re a fan of the tv show Leverage you will most definitely enjoy Portrait of a Thief!
My book club read Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus then watched My Octopus Teacher, which won the 2020 Oscar for best documentary. These are such strange and fascinating creatures, which is not how I would have described them before learning more from the book/film. Both are well worth the time, and I’ve not been able to eat octopus since (although, if truth be told, I never ate it before either).
For tomato fans, another great book is 2011’s Tomatoland. It’s a little bit science and history, and then delves into the American tomato industry and farm practices (e.g., cases of slavery uncovered in Florida). But be warned, reading it made me think I’ll never buy another tomato without knowing where it came from.
Just read The Golden Enclaves, the conclusion of Naomi Novak’s Scholomance trilogy. Terrific finish, so good, that I reread the first two again. Wonderful story about looking at the mess you’re born into and insisting on finding a better way.
And if you want a great fiction book with an Octopus as a narrator, check out “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt.