Gator Country

An exciting, propulsive true story about an alligator poaching sting operation in Florida and what it reveals about nature—including human nature.

In Gator Country, science and nature journalist, Rebecca Renner delivers an astounding story about an alligator-poaching operation in the Florida Everglades. She grew up in Florida, the “swampy deep south,” one of the most bio diverse places in the country. At the age of seven, she encountered her first alligator up close behind her family’s home. By 2017, Renner was working to support herself as a high school English teacher when a student had turned in a well-informed, intimate wildlife essay on poaching--“the active illegally taking or flora or fauna from the wild”--and profiting from it. The student feared Renner might snitch on him, and this planted a seed in Renner. 

 

Years later, when she was working her way up the ranks as a nature writer for National Geographic and The New York Times, Renner’s interest in poaching resurfaced. In 2020, she became determined to learn more about alligator poaching from the points of view of the law and the poachers--those whom she identified as the economically poor, struggling to live in Florida’s diminishing wetlands. Her adventurous, in-depth study probes the nature of crime and human character, while also mining the far-reaching consequences of what it truly takes to survive—in the wild and in society.

 

Renner (Drift: Collected Short Fiction), a gifted and deeply empathetic writer, paints such sympathetic, well-rounded portraits of the justice-seeking rangers and wildlife officers versus the struggling-to-survive poachers that readers will have trouble taking sides. Her propulsive narrative reads as suspensefully as a well-wrought mystery novel as she uncovers an exciting true story that will educate, enlighten, and enthrall her audience. 

 

Gator Country: Deception, Danger and Alligators in the Everglades by Rebecca Renner

Flatiron Books (Macmillan), $29.99 hardcover, 9781250842572, 288 pages

Publishing Date: November 14, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (November 17, 2023), link HERE 

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (October 2, 2023), link HERE

What the Dead Know

A dedicated medical examiner from the City of New York shares fascinating, soul-searching stories that came to define her career—and her life. 

Barbara Butcher is one tough lady. Only the second woman ever appointed to serve as a death investigator in Manhattan, she helped solve crimes that could’ve calloused and darkened her heart many times over. However, in her fascinating, down to earth memoir, What the Dead Know, she tells riveting personal stories about investigating homicides, suicides, and tragic accidents that moved and changed her life in extraordinary ways.

 

Butcher came to the profession through a series of unexpected, fortunate events. A teen who suffered from depression and suicidal impulses--and experimented with drugs--she struggled for direction after high school. A woman she worked for at a nursing home took note of Butcher’s potential and encouraged her to become a physician assistant. College coursework on anatomy, physiology, chemistry, pathology, and solving diagnosis puzzles lit a fire under Butcher’s ambitions. She did work stints in surgery and gynecology, and went on to earn a master’s degree in public health. Just as Butcher was en route to a cushy but boring career as a hospital administrator, her personal life unraveled. After she hit rock bottom, she found Alcoholics Anonymous and some career counseling. Butcher was deemed best suited for a career as a coroner.

 

Inquisitive readers--especially fans of mysteries and true crime--will be captivated by Butcher’s appealing, conversational writing style. She presents a trove of detailed, sobering case studies of how notorious investigations--including a chilling section about her work during 9-11--often wore her down while also expanding her skill set and intellect, enriching the depths of her character. 

 

What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher

Simon and Schuster, $26.99 hardcover, 288 pages, 9781982179380

Publishing Date: June 20, 2023

 

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different from) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (May 11, 2023), link HERE

A shortened version of this same review was published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (June 23, 2023). Link HERE to read that review.

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures

A spellbinding true-crime story about an underdog inventor believed to have birthed motion pictures who vanished before his invention ever went mainstream.

Paul Fischer (A Kim Jong-Il Production) is a meticulous writer, screenwriter and film producer known for dismantling the secretive worlds of true-crime stories. In The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, Fischer probes the life of Louis Le Prince, a struggling independent inventor largely lost to history, who, in 1888, first captured moving images of his family, and later secured patents in four countries for his innovation. But, in 1890, one month prior to unveiling his brainchild far and wide, Louis visited his estranged brother in Dijon, France. At the reunion of these now middle-aged siblings, Louis, with fervent passion and zeal, shared details about his creation and how he believed motion pictures "could alter the course of humankind" and "revolutionize the human experience, as drastically as the railroad and the telephone." After their visit, Louis set off to take an express train back to Paris, en route to the U.S., but somewhere between Dijon and Paris, he vanished and was never seen again.

His disappearance was never solved, but his devoted, long-suffering wife spent the remainder of her days trying to prove her husband had been kidnapped and killed--all arranged by Thomas Alva Edison, who she claimed stole his invention and, in 1894, launched it as his own. Edison claimed that his Kinetoscope technology marked the birth of motion pictures.

With a spellbinding presentation supported by painstaking research, Fischer puts forth evidence to try to unravel the mystery of Le Prince's life and death. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures is a work of art unto itself.

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder and the Movies by Paul Fischer

Simon and Schuster, $28.99 hardcover, 9781982114824, 416 pages

Publication Date: April 19, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 19, 2022), link HERE

 

To read the longer form of this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (February 15, 2022), link HERE