Strangling vines and meat-hungry flora fill this unruly garden of strange stories, selected for their significance as the seeds of the villainous (or perhaps just misunderstood) `killer plant' in fiction, film and video games. Step within to marvel at Charlotte Perkins Gilman's giant wistaria and H. G. Wells' hungry orchid; hear the calls of the ethereal women of the wood, and the frightful drone of the moaning lily; and do tread carefully around E. Nesbit's wandering creepers...Every strain of vegetable threat (and one deadly fungus) can be found within this new collection, representing the very best tales from the undergrowth of Gothic fiction.

'Its long antennae waved inquiringly back and forth, its tiny eyes sparkled black with crimson points, and then it began to run. The Professor caught it in his hand as it toppled from the edge of the counter. It bit him.'A brush with a killer hornet upends a reverend's life. A moth wreaks a strange vengeance on an entomologist. Bees deliver a supernatural dilemma to a mother-to-be. This new anthology offers a broad range of stories from the long history of insect literature, where six-legged beasts play many roles from lethal enemies to ethereal messengers.With expert notes on how each tale contributed to insect horror literature, Janette Leaf and Daisy Butcher are your field guides for a tour through classic insect encounters from the minds of Edgar Allan Poe, E. F. Benson, Clare Winger Harris and many more.

Strangling vines and meat-hungry flora fill this unruly garden of strange stories, selected for their significance as the seeds of the villainous (or perhaps just misunderstood) `killer plant' in fiction, film and video games. Step within to marvel at Charlotte Perkins Gilman's giant wistaria and H. G. Wells' hungry orchid; hear the calls of the ethereal women of the wood, and the frightful drone of the moaning lily; and do tread carefully around E. Nesbit's wandering creepers...Every strain of vegetable threat (and one deadly fungus) can be found within this new collection, representing the very best tales from the undergrowth of Gothic fiction.

'Its long antennae waved inquiringly back and forth, its tiny eyes sparkled black with crimson points, and then it began to run. The Professor caught it in his hand as it toppled from the edge of the counter. It bit him.'A brush with a killer hornet upends a reverend's life. A moth wreaks a strange vengeance on an entomologist. Bees deliver a supernatural dilemma to a mother-to-be. This new anthology offers a broad range of stories from the long history of insect literature, where six-legged beasts play many roles from lethal enemies to ethereal messengers.With expert notes on how each tale contributed to insect horror literature, Janette Leaf and Daisy Butcher are your field guides for a tour through classic insect encounters from the minds of Edgar Allan Poe, E. F. Benson, Clare Winger Harris and many more.