From a beguiling voice in Mexican fiction comes an astonishing novel--her first to be translated into English--about a mysterious child with the power to change a family's history in a country on the verge of revolution. From the day that old Nana Reja found a baby abandoned under a bridge, the life of a small Mexican town forever changed. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, little Simonopio is for some locals the stuff of superstition, a child kissed by the devil. But he is welcomed by landowners Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt him and care for him as if he were their own. As he grows up, Simonopio becomes a cause for wonder to the Morales family, because when the uncannily gifted child closes his eyes, he can see what no one else can--visions of all that's yet to come, both beautiful and dangerous. Followed by his protective swarm of bees and living to deliver his adoptive family from threats--both human and those of nature--Simonopio's purpose in Linares will, in time, be divined. Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and the devastating influenza of 1918, The Murmur of Bees captures both the fate of a country in flux and the destiny of one family that has put their love, faith, and future in the unbelievable.

Think of Sherlock Holmes and you think of mysteries, John Watson...and bees. While Arthur Conan Doyle sent the great detective to tend hives in retirement, here bees are front and centre in stories of love and romance, war and hope, of honey on the tongue and a sting in the tail. In tales of rare nectars, secret diaries, and the private language of lovers, bees may be the buzzing heart of the story...or as ephemeral as a murmur. What you'll find in every tale are John Watson and Sherlock Holmes helping one another, wanting one another, loving one another. To encourage a world where such love is seen for the precious thing it is, profits from "A Murmuring of Bees" will be donated to the It Gets Better Project.

A sparkling debut collection from one of the hottest writers in science fiction: her stories have received the Nebula Award the last two years running. These stories feature cats, bees, wolves, dogs, and even that most capricious of animals, humans, and have been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and The Secret History of Fantasy. At the Mouth of the River of Bees 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss The Horse Raiders Spar Fox Magic Names for Water Schrodinger’s Cathouse My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire Chenting, in the Land of the Dead The Bitey Cat The Empress Jingu Fishes Wolf Trapping The Man Who Bridged the Mist Ponies The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change Kij Johnson's stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing; worked at Tor, Dark Horse, and Microsoft; worked as a radio announcer; run bookstores; and waitressed in a strip bar.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER! A Good Morning America BUZZ PICK | A Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick | IndieNext Pick | LibraryReads Pick | Recommended by People ∙ The Washington Post ∙ Woman's World ∙ NY Post ∙ BookRiot ∙ Bookish ∙ Christian Science Monitor ∙ Nerd Daily ∙ The Tempest ∙ Midwestness ∙ The Coil ∙ Read It Forward ∙ and more! “An exquisite debut that combines a moving tale of friendship with a fascinating primer on bees.”--People “This heartwarming, uplifting story will make you want to call your own friends, not to mention grab some honey.”--Good Housekeeping Three lonely strangers in a rural Oregon town, each working through grief and life's curveballs, are brought together by happenstance on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing--and maybe even a second chance--just when they least expect it. Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family, and now reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. Alice has begun having panic attacks whenever she thinks about how her life hasn't turned out the way she dreamed. Even the beloved honeybees she raises in her spare time aren't helping her feel better these days. In the grip of a panic attack, she nearly collides with Jake--a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in Hood River County--while carrying 120,000 honeybees in the back of her pickup truck. Charmed by Jake's sincere interest in her bees and seeking to rescue him from his toxic home life, Alice surprises herself by inviting Jake to her farm. And then there's Harry, a twenty-four-year-old with debilitating social anxiety who is desperate for work. When he applies to Alice's ad for part-time farm help, he's shocked to find himself hired. As an unexpected friendship blossoms among Alice, Jake, and Harry, a nefarious pesticide company moves to town, threatening the local honeybee population and illuminating deep-seated corruption in the community. The unlikely trio must unite for the sake of the bees--and in the process, they just might forge a new future for themselves. Beautifully moving, warm, and uplifting, The Music of Bees is about the power of friendship, compassion in the face of loss, and finding the courage to start over (at any age) when things don't turn out the way you expect. “A hopeful, uplifting story about the power of chosen family and newfound home and beginning again . . . but it’s the bees, with all their wonder and intricacy and intrigue, that make this story sing.” --Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is "Eileen Garvin's debut novel is uplifting, funny, bold, and inspirational. The Music of Bees sings!" --Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author

The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut set in an ancient culture where only the queen may breed and deformity means death. Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. But Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening the hive’s survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw but her courage and strength are an asset. She is allowed to feed the newborns in the royal nursery and then to become a forager, flying alone and free to collect pollen. She also finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers mysteries about the hive that are both profound and ominous. But when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all—daring to challenge the Queen’s fertility—enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses jealously wedded to power. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart, her society—and lead her to unthinkable deeds. Thrilling, suspenseful and spectacularly imaginative, The Bees gives us a dazzling young heroine and will change forever the way you look at the world outside your window.

In this story of an astonishing love, Thomas Sanchez portrays the violence, hope, and grandeur of lives transformed by war and exile. At the heart of the novel are Zermano, a world-famous Spanish painter, and his beautiful French muse, Louise Collard -- whose lives are torn apart by the German invasion of France in World War II. Leaving Louise in Vichy-controlled Provence, Zermano returns to occupied Paris. But while he eventually goes on to celebrity and fortune, Louise disappears into obscurity. Fifty years later, after Louise's death, an American scholar arrives in the south of France seeking the truth about the lovers' tempestuous romance and sudden separation. Why did the painter abandon the young beauty? What was the cause of her lifelong reclusiveness? What dark mysteries were being concealed by the ill-fated couple? By chance, the professor finds a cache of correspondence -- Zermano's letters to Louise in her remote mountain village, and her intentionally unmailed letters to him in Paris. In their vivid, wrenching contents he uncovers secrets that Louise kept even from Zermano about her wartime experience: the dangers of her participation in the Resistance, and her complicity with one of its leaders, the Fly; her struggles to elude a sadistic officer who hunts her for political and personal reasons; her lyrical intimacy with a mystical beekeeper. Louise is forced to make a fateful decision between the love for her man, and the ultimate sacrifice for her country. In a powerful climax, the scholar is compelled to journey to Mallorca, where Zermano is rumored to be living in self-imposed exile. Determined to reveal Louise's fate to the painter, our narrator does not suspect that he, too, will be forced to confront the enigma of his own desire.

With a philosopher's perception and a scientist's knowledge, Wallace interweaves the facts of honeybee biology with reflections on desire, intimacy, work, evolution, memory, and home.

"A Book of Myths" deals in a most entertaining manner with the mythology of Greece and Rome and many other noted lands. Added to the pleasure of the story there is the lure of the legend and the spell of old ways and customs. Not only many of the most celebrated are retold, but also many of the less well-known tales. The aim of the author, it is stated, has been to simplify for those who are not erudite scholars the stories of mythology, to which constant reference is made not only in classic, but in modern poetry, and to direct the attention of readers to poems which are not already known to them. Included are tales of Prometheus, Pygmalion, Orpheus, Perseus, King Midas, Pan, the Lorelei, Baldur and many more.

When tall buildings and loud noise drown out the sounds of bees in the grass and birds in the sky, one soul cares enough to start over again and help nature thrive.