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LBI doesn’t have rules about what to feature in Staff Picks, but it’s generally understood to go with frontlist or recently published material, so why have I picked the 2014 title, Slow Horses, by Mick Herron? Full transparency: because I was given an apple TV subscription at Christmas and I promptly binged FIVE seasons of a show based on books I’d not even read.
Earlier in my life I was a snob who would have never knowingly watched something without reading the book first. Which would have been a shame in this instance. Once I’d watched all available seasons, I determined which books had not yet been covered and have been working through them, and they’re all the richer for having the voices of the actors in the widely acclaimed TV series in my head while doing it.
The series names of Slough House refers to the setting where disgraced MI5 agents spend out the remainder of their botched careers in mind numbing tasks of tediousness, directed by a chain smoking, flatulent alcoholic who treats his staff worse than an eagle with a bunny rabbit. The title of book one, Slow Horses, refers to the slang name for this miserable group of rejects that plod towards their pensions with the resigned air of Sisyphus with a boulder. While months pass like sludge, the slow horses do occasionally find themselves called to action (misadventure might be a better term), which provides plots for each book or TV season. I began reading from book six forward, Joe Country, and have just picked up the most recent, Clown Town, which was published in Sept 2025. The books do not disappoint. I’d strongly recommend them to anyone that appreciates droll and dark humor mixed with action, espionage, and British sarcasm and snark, whether or not you’ve seen the show. If you came to this series as I did, via the screen, you’ll enjoy every line you read from Jackson Lamb, played by Gary Oldman, whose voice you’ll hear in your mind’s eye, along with the wind he’s constantly passing and the pained expressions of those around him. I realize I’m spoiling the surprise but by the time Season six rolls around this fall, I’ll have read at least 75 books and it’ll likely present as near new. I’ve nothing but praise for the books, and think the 97% score for the series on Rotten Tomatoes is justly deserved.
(Sorry, way too long, but tough to cut it much more when talking about a nine book and five season series)
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True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen by Lance Richardson
This first biography of the only writer to have ever won the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction, is appropriately epic, in detail and scope.
To say that Matthiessen (1927–2014) lived an extraordinary life is to put it mildly. A co-founder of The Paris Review, he developed environmental/nature writing in a way that forced it to be taken seriously, and widely read, through books like The Snow Leopard and Wildlife in America. He played an important role in introducing Zen Buddhism to the US, pre-dated Timothy Leary as a pioneer of LSD research, and was at the forefront of myriad social activist causes, including work with Cesar Chavez. He spent decades trying to secure the release of Leonard Pelletier and bringing the plight of Native Americans to a wide audience.
Refusing to let himself be pigeonholed as a nature writer, he returned again and again to fiction, notably in Far Tortuga, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, and the NBA-winning Shadow Country. For someone who would become an ordained Zen priest, and practitioner of zazen (seated meditation), he always seemed to be contradictorily in motion: traveling the world on journalism assignments, for literary research, teaching and speaking engagements and participating in social activism demonstrations. Who else but Peter Matthiessen would turn down an invite to the “Party of the Century” (Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball) because he was too busy?
Journo Lance Richardson provides an unsparing and detailed account that doesn’t dodge Matthiessen’s involvement with the CIA, his three marriages and many affairs, relationships with his children, publishers, editors and agents, the lawsuits that plagued him after publishing In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, his mercurial moods and occasional naivete. A magisterial look at one of the towering figures of 20th century literature.
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Joyride more than lives up to its title in this look back at the evolution of a writer, from small alternative weeklies in Portland, through stories placed with Outside, Esquire, Vanity Fair and eventually as staff writer for The New Yorker.
Orlean’s work infamously wanders and takes long detours for digressions, but she presents her life chronologically to give us a real understanding of a career, and life, marked with indefatigable curiosity and wonder. Catnip for both fans of her work and those looking to chart a similar career path.
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Birds of Maine by Michael DeForge
Originally appearing as a webcomic, DeForge gives us a deadpan absurd satire of a utopian colony on the moon, established by birds that have fled a human degraded earth. Any world where librarian and historian are the most honourable professions is one for me. Life as a hot pelican doesn’t seem bad either.
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