8 Bee-utiful Books Named After Insects

This spellbinding and deeply moving novel follows three generations of beekeepers from the past, present, and future—in 1852 England, 2007 USA, and 2098 China—as they work for better lives for their beloved children and battle against an urgent, global crisis that threatens not only the bees but humanity itelf.

Matteo Alacrán was not born; he was cloned from the DNA of El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium—a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. Matteo struggles to understand his existence while facing threats from many sides, including El Patrón’s power-hungry family. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive, but escape from the Alacrán Estate is no guarantee of freedom.

In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place as an eighth-grade social outcast until the “coolest girl in the world,” Tully Hart, moves in next door and the two become inseparable friends. Spanning more than three decades, this is the powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.

Based on a true event set in late nineteenth-century Ireland, this is the story of Maddie McGlade, a former nanny now in her nineties, who realizes that the time has come to unburden herself of a secret she has kept for over more than seventy years: what really happened the day Charlotte Ormond, a four-year-old girl Maddie nannied for as a young woman, died. The book unfolds in alternating chapters between Maddie’s story and the prison diaries of Charlotte’s mother, who had been held responsible for her daughter’s death.

Carefully selected by the creative minds at storytelling phenomenon The Moth, ALL THESE WONDERS contains the stories of people, including an astronomer gazing at the surface of Pluto for the first time, an Afghan refugee learning how much her father sacrificed to save their family, a hip-hop star coming to terms with being a “one-hit wonder,” a young female spy risking everything as part of Churchill’s “secret army” during World War II, and more.

Genius hacker Lisbeth Salander and crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist are back in this follow-up to Stieg Larsson’s THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST. One night, Blomkvist receives a call from a source who claims to have information vital to the United States. Blomkvist, always on the lookout for a story, reaches out to Salander for help. She, as usual, has plans of her own.

In a breathtaking adventure story, the paranoid and brilliant inventor Allie Fox takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle, determined to build a civilization better than the one they’ve left. Fleeing from an America he sees as mired in materialism and conformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life. But his utopian experiment takes a dark turn when his obsessions lead the family toward unimaginable danger.

A fascinating, mind-blowing jaunt through evolution’s most unbelievable, most ingenious solutions to the problems of everyday life, from trying to mate to finding food. Join Wired science writer Matt Simon as he introduces strange and wondrous creatures that have it figured out, ones that joust with their mustaches or choke sharks to death with snot, all in a wild struggle to survive and, of course, find true love.