"A witty and grisly gothic unlike anything I’ve ever read. You should absolutely read this." --Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble A new arrival at an isolated school for orphaned boys quickly comes to realize there is something wrong with his new home. He hears chilling whispers in the night, his troubled classmates are violent and hostile, and the Headmaster sends cryptic messages, begging his new charge to confess. As the new boy learns to survive on the edges of this impolite society, he starts to unravel a mystery at the school's dark heart. And that's when the corpses start turning up. A coming-of-age tale, a Gothic ghost story, and a murder mystery all in one, The Job of the Wasp is a bloodcurdling and brilliantly subversive novel about paranoia, love, and the nightmare of adolescence.

The war had been going on for nearly a year and the Sirian Empire had a huge advantage in personnel and equipment. Earth needed an edge. Which was where James Mowry came in. If a small insect buzzing around in a car could so distract the driver as to cause that vehicle to crash, think what havoc one properly trained operative could wreak on an unuspecting enemy. Intensively trained, his appearance surgically altered, James Mowry is landed on Jaimec, the ninety-fourth planet of the Sirian Empire. His mission is simple: sap morale, cause mayhem, tie up resources, wage a one-man war on a planet of eighty million. In short, be a wasp. First published in 1957, WASP is generally regarded as Eric Frank Russell's best novel, a witty and exciting account of a covert war in the heart of enemy territory.

With over 400 pages and 900 full-color illustrations, The Social Wasps of North America is the world's first complete illustrated field guide to all known species of social wasps from the high arctic of Greenland and Alaska to the tropical forests of Panama and Grenada. For beginners, experts, and everyone in-between, The Social Wasps of North America provides new insights about some of the world’s least popular beneficial insects, plus tips and tricks to avoid painful stings. This book includes detailed information about the ecology, evolution, taxonomy, anatomy, nest architecture, and conservation of social wasp species. To purchase this book in softcover format, visit our website at OwlflyLLC.com/publications.

When a notorious millionaire banker hangs himself, his death attracts no sympathy. But the legacy of a lifetime of selfishness is widespread, and the carnage most acute among those he ought to be protecting: his family. Meanwhile, in a wealthy suburb of Glasgow, a young woman is found savagely murdered. The community is stunned by what appears to be a vicious, random attack. When Detective Inspector Alex Morrow, heavily pregnant with twins, is called in to investigate, she soon discovers that a tangled web of lies lurks behind the murder. It's a web that will spiral through Alex's own home, the local community, and ultimately right back to a swinging rope, hundreds of miles away. The End of the Wasp Season is an accomplished, compelling and multi-layered novel about family's power of damage-and redemption.

'Acampora is an original' Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City An electrifying debut novel of two women's friendship, a haunting obsession and twisted ambition, set against the feverish backdrop of contemporary Hollywood. Abby Graven is a dreamer. She dreams her way through her small, lonely life - hiding back at her parents, working at the grocery store. At night, she collects tabloid clippings that taunt her with Elise - her best friend, now Hollywood's hot new starlet. When a school reunion throws Elise in her path, Abby seizes her chance. With feverish certainty, she boards a one-way flight to LA to become Elise's assistant and enters her gauzy realm of film sets and glamorous actors. But behind Elise's glossy magazine veneer, she is drowning in Hollywood's vicious social cycle. Ever the devoted friend, Abby conceals her own burning desire for greatness. For she is smarter than Elise. More talented. A true artist. And as she edges closer to her own ambitions, Abby can see only one way to make her dream come true. Propelled by seductive, unstoppable force, The Paper Wasp slashes through the dark side of Hollywood and the treacherous intimacies of female friendship, pursuing a heroine of blazing artistic vision and blinding drive.

After an intelligence failure at Op-Center results in a major terrorist attack, director Chase Williams radically transforms the agency into a ground-breaking mobile strike force. It’s a beautiful day in Manhattan as excited tourists board the floating Air & Space Museum on the USS Intrepid—until a horrible explosion rips across the flight deck, showering the body parts of innocent people everywhere. The perpetrator is none other than Captain Ahmed Salehi, an Iranian mastermind whose last terrorism plot was foiled at the last minute by Op-Center. Back in Washington, the White House orders Op-Center disbanded—or so it seems. Unbeknownst to America’s enemies, director Chase Williams has been put in charge of a brand-new, top-secret covert attack team known only as BLACK WASP. Its members, each chosen for their unique set of specialized black-ops skills—martial arts expert Lieutenant Grace Lee, sharpshooter Lance Corporal Jaz Rivette, and JAG attorney and criminologist Major Hamilton Breen—have been assigned to seek out Salehi and finally bring him to justice. But Salehi is part of an even more frightening conspiracy, led by a renegade Iranian tycoon determined to establish a new Islamic State that will dwarf the horrors of ISIS. From the heart of Manhattan, to the swamps of Trinidad, to the sunbaked mud villages of Yemen, this new Op-Center is America’s only line of defense against a bloody Middle Eastern tyrant.

Grade level: 1, 2, 3, p, e.

In two sharp, refreshingly different novellas, Colin Winette explores the tragic but persistent bloodline of a family in small-town Texas, and the surreal, various lives of two sisters, exploring what, if anything, holds us together.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral comes a funny, chilling novel set in a small town in the 1940s Midwest, featuring a young woman whose moral goodness may destroy her. "High, careful tragedy, nasty as life, and Roth emerges ... as a Dreiser who can write!" —Stanley Elkin When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been trying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means destroying herself in the process. With his unerring portraits of Lucy and her hapless, childlike husband, Roy, Roth has created an uncompromising work of fictional realism, a vision of provincial American piety, yearning, and discontent that is at once pitiless and compassionate.

The polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath. Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least: Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.