Here are a few books with environmental themes that we’ve been reading this month.

Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller. Short, sparkling nonfiction about a pioneering taxonomist at the turn of the 20th century who obsessively “discovered” and named hundreds of species of fish. At first, the author turns to this historical figure as a paragon of order, purpose, and perseverence, and these early chapters reminded me of reading Andrea Barrett’s short fiction of scientific discovery. But the more the author learns about her paragon, the darker his story is revealed to be–there’s murder! nepotism! eugenics!!–and she is forced to find her own version of order and purpose, or embrace chaos.—Sara

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane is a gorgeously written book, with sentences as lush and verdant as the cloud forest the author visits in Ecuador. That helps, because the content can be painful to read at times: the author visits rivers that are drying up, rivers that are too polluted to support life, and endangered rivers whose vitality depends on precarious legal protections. But as we learn about these ecologically sensitive waters, we also meet people all over the world who dedicate their time to defending them and telling their stories.—Sara

Underlake by Erin L. McCoy. Decades after a dam causes mass drowning, a woman discovers that the community may still be alive under the water. A lyrical novel about loss, mothers and daughters, and family secrets, but also about environmental contamination, resistance, and the double-edged sword of our need for “purity.”—Stephanie