{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"site_cron_amazon_bestseller_frontier_20261029T020001Z","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/044900371X?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"044900371X","authors":["Susan Orlean"],"book_id":"9780449003718","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/the-orchid-thief-044900371X","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780449003718.jpg?v=298a38283ee068b0","description":"NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • THE BASIS FOR THE FILM ADAPTATION DIRECTED BY SPIKE JONZE AND STARRING NICOLAS CAGE AND MERYL STREEP The “eccentric, illuminating, [and] hilarious” (New York Daily News) true story of beauty and obsession in the swamps of Florida and the impassioned individuals who risk everything for the ultimate prize: a rare ghost orchid “Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.”—Los Angeles Times Meet John Laroche, a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive renegade plant dealer. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole men were arrested with rare ghost orchids—Polyrrhiza lindenii—they had stolen from a wild swamp in South Florida. Laroche had planned to clone the endangered orchids and sell them for a small fortune to impassioned buyers. In The Orchid Thief, acclaimed journalist Susan Orlean follows 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. This unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture becomes even more bizarre as Orlean details how the head of a famous Seminole chief came to be displayed in the front window of a local pharmacy, how seven hundred iguanas were smuggled into Florida, and the case of the only known extraterrestrial plant crime. A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is a wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780449003718","publication_date":"20000104","publisher":"Random House Publishing Group","slug":"the-orchid-thief","subtitle":"A True Story of Beauty and Obsession","title":"The Orchid Thief"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"TRU000000","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"True Crime","score":0.62,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"GAR004040","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"Orchids","score":0.43,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"BIO024000","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"Criminals & Outlaws","score":0.27,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"TRU000000","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"True 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