
The Orchid Thief
A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
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Narrated by:
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Jennifer Meyers
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By:
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Susan Orlean
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
In Susan Orlean's mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole Indians were arrested with rare orchids they had stolen from a wild swamp in south Florida that is filled with some of the world's most extraordinary plants and trees. Laroche had planned to clone the orchids and then sell them for a small fortune to impassioned collectors. After he was caught in the act, Laroche set off one of the oddest legal controversies in recent memory, which brought together environmentalists, Native Amer-ican activists, and devoted orchid collectors. The result is a tale that is strange, compelling, and hilarious.
New Yorker writer Susan Orlean followed Laroche through swamps and into the eccentric world of Florida's orchid collectors, a subculture of aristocrats, fanatics, and smugglers whose obsession with plants is all-consuming. Along the way, Orlean learned the history of orchid collecting, discovered an odd pattern of plant crimes in Florida, and spent time with Laroche's partners, a tribe of Seminole Indians who are still at war with the United States.
There is something fascinating or funny or truly bizarre on every page of The Orchid Thief: the story of how the head of a famous Seminole chief came to be displayed in the front window of a local pharmacy; or how seven hundred iguanas were smuggled into Florida; or the case of the only known extraterrestrial plant crime. Ultimately, however, Susan Orlean's book is about passion itself, and the amazing lengths to which people will go to gratify it. That passion is captured with singular vision in The Orchid Thief, a once-in-a-lifetime story by one of our most original journalists.
Praise for The Orchid Thief
“Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean’s] gifts in full bloom.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.”—Los Angeles Times
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Critic reviews
“Orlean’s snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose . . . is fast becoming one of our national treasures.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Orlean’s gifts [are] her ear for the self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her Didion-like deftness in description.”—Boston Sunday Globe
“A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great.”—The Wall Street Journal
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- Narrated by: Susan Orlean
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Abridged
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My Kind of Place takes listeners on a series of remarkable journeys in a uniquely witty and sophisticated travel audiobook. In this irresistible collection of adventures far and near, Susan Orlean coducts a tour of the world via its subcultures, from the heart of the African music scene in Paris to the World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois, and even into her own apartment, where she imagines a very famous houseguest taking advantage of her hospitality.
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Wonderful listening, but the music!
- By Erik N on 01-09-06
By: Susan Orlean
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No One Is Talking About This
- A Novel
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats--from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness--begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void.
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Funny, moving, glad to have read it
- By Terra on 05-26-21
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Too Late to Say Goodbye
- By: Ann Rule
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Jenn Corbin appeared to have it all: two dear little boys, a posh home in one of the upscale suburbs of Atlanta, expensive cars, a plush houseboat, and a husband - Dr. Bart Corbin, a successful dentist - who was tall, handsome, and brilliant. But gradually, their seemingly idyllic life together began to crumble. Bart was distraught and Jenn seemed disenchanted. Then, just a few weeks before Christmas 2004, Jenn was found dead with a bullet in her head, an apparent suicide....
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Ann Rule does it again
- By Lily on 11-17-15
By: Ann Rule
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Memoirs of a Polar Bear
- By: Yoko Tawada, Susan Bernofsky
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis, Paul Woodson
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Three generations (grandmother, mother, son) of polar bears are famous as both circus performers and writers in East Germany. They are polar bears who move in human society, stars of the ring and of the literary world. In chapter one, the grandmother matriarch in the Soviet Union accidentally writes a best-selling autobiography.
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Beautifully crafted
- By JayTeee on 10-16-18
By: Yoko Tawada, and others
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The Outermost House
- A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
- By: Henry Beston
- Narrated by: Brett Barry
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In 1926, Henry Beston spent two weeks in a two-room cottage on the sand dunes of Cape Cod. He had not intended to stay longer, but, as he later wrote, "I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go."
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beautifully written, beautifully narrated
- By E. Beckstrom on 02-04-19
By: Henry Beston
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Amity and Prosperity
- One Family and the Fracturing of America
- By: Eliza Griswold
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Prize-winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold’s Amity and Prosperity is an expose on how fracking shattered a rural Pennsylvania town, and how one lifelong resident brought the story into the national spotlight. This is an incredible true account of investigative journalism and a devastating indictment of energy politics in America.
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touching and poignant
- By Mother of Chickens on 06-28-18
By: Eliza Griswold
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The Master and Margarita
- By: Mikhail Bulgakov
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
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The Master and Margarita is one of the most famous and best-selling Russian novels of the 20th century, despite its surreal environment of talking cats, Satan and mysterious happenings. Naxos AudioBooks presents this careful abridgement of a new translation in an imaginative reading by the charismatic Julian Rhind-Tutt. With War and Peace and Crime and Punishment among the Naxos AudioBooks best-sellers, this too promises to be a front title.
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Very vivid and amazing writing style
- By Sina Beni on 05-04-22
By: Mikhail Bulgakov
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Black Edge
- Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street
- By: Sheelah Kolhatkar
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Steven A. Cohen changed Wall Street. He and his fellow pioneers of the hedge fund industry didn’t lay railroads, build factories, or invent new technologies. Rather, they made their billions through financial speculation, by placing bets in the market that turned out to be right more often than not.
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Amazing book about trading that feels like an adventure novel
- By Tim S on 05-24-18
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The Art Thief
- A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
- By: Michael Finkel
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Michael Finkel
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.
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A book that's steals your attention!
- By samy on 07-23-23
By: Michael Finkel
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Catch and Kill
- Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
- By: Ronan Farrow
- Narrated by: Ronan Farrow
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2017, a routine network television investigation led to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family.
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Excellent book
- By Jonathan Knodel on 10-16-19
By: Ronan Farrow
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In Cold Blood
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.
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Still the Best
- By Lisa on 01-10-06
By: Truman Capote
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Dark Money
- The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
- By: Jane Mayer
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 16 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the rise of a broad-based conservative movement.
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"I just want my fair share--which is all of it."
- By Darwin8u on 11-28-16
By: Jane Mayer
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Bad Blood
- Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
- By: John Carreyrou
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion.
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Extreme retaliation against former employees
- By LEE on 05-29-18
By: John Carreyrou
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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
- By: John Berendt
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman, Will Damron, John Berendt
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative flows like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction.
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LOVED IT!!!
- By Heidi on 07-11-10
By: John Berendt
Any additional comments?
After watching, "Adaptation" I wanted to read the book that was so hard to turn into a screenplay. I now know why. This was a really well researched, historically interesting book which I found well put together and funny at times. Maybe what was ultimately lacking, and that which the author freely admits to, is that she chose to write a book about being passionate about something having never really felt that way herself. And it is apparent in her writing. All the ingredients were there for an awesome book, but it just sort of fell flat. Even with all of the interesting people she met and wrote about. I'm not sad I listened to it (and I thought the narrator was spot on) but overall it was mediocre.I really wanted to like this book more
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Great Read
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A funny true story about a colorful character
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What did you love best about The Orchid Thief?
This story is actually a true story about a person who was being prosecuted in Florida for stealing orchids from a state protected zone. But it is much more than that. The author has done her research. She tells a lot about the state, orchids in general and the love and passion that people have had for orchids throughout history. I recommend the book for people who love orchids and who would like to know a lot more about them and their history.What other book might you compare The Orchid Thief to and why?
I don't really know any other book that is comparative to this one.Which character – as performed by Jennifer Meyers – was your favorite?
The author narrates the book about her research into the person who was arrested and the circumstances and she does a great job. I liked the author.Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
No, it made me very interested as it is a subject that I have a lot of interest in.Any additional comments?
It is actually very humorous though she definitely fills you in on a lot of detail about the subject the author makes it very enjoyable.IF YOU LIKE ORCHIDS
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Another world
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great read
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great reading
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geeky obsession
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I was extremely desapointed with the narrator; her voice was too monotone....I almost stopped listening at the beginning of the book.
I'm glad I decided to listen to the whole book.
Excellent book.
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The author definitely did her homework. If you are an orchid lover you will enjoy this book.
Very entertaining!
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