Dogtown is a 'landscape biography' that is far more haunting than your average history book. Elyssa East manages to weave together the 1984 murder of a schoolteacher with the colonial decay of a Massachusetts ghost town in a way that feels both scholarly and propulsive.

If you're looking for a light read about dogs or a cozy New England travelog, keep moving. This is a gritty, intellectual exploration of how a specific 3,000-acre patch of woods can inspire both the highest forms of art and the lowest forms of human violence. It's excellent, but it's heavy.