All of the Editor’s recommendations this issue involve three things that go together: museums, their staff members, and their collections. The theft of artifacts from those collections adds impact to most of them.

Noah Charney, The Art Thief (2007). The only work of fiction in this group is the work of a young English art historian who directs ARCA, the Associa­tion for Research into Crimes against Art. Its plot is built around three simultaneous thefts in three different cities.

Danny Danziger, Museum : Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2007), is a series of interviews with randomly-chosen staff members of the Met, from the florist to the director (in alphabetical order). If you’ve ever wondered what goes on behind the galleries, and speculated on the sorts of people who inhabit them, you must read this book.

Edward Dolnick, The Rescue Artist (2005). Dolnick treats the theft of art rather like an adventure saga. Not that he’s on the side of the thieves; but he recounts the stories with the gusto of an author of “penny-dreadfuls.”

Simon Haupt, Museum of the Missing : A History of Art Theft (2006). The author of this beautiful and riveting work guides a reader through what he calls “a disease that is slowly eating away at the heart of the art market.” He treats the reasons, the means, the perpetrators; and concludes with a harrowing Gallery of Missing Art.

Michael Kimmelman, The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa (2005). Kimmelman’s tone is conversational, and his subjects range freely among collectors of lightbulbs, George Eastman’s first efforts with a camera, and travel as pilgrimage.

Lawrence Wechsler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1996). The “Museum of Jurassic Technology’ is one of the proofs that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. The history, collections, and rationale of that bizarre creation are beautifully recounted. And don’t think it’s imaginary: I’ve been there.