KEEPER OF THE BEES is a tale of two people who are both beautiful and beastly, and whose pasts are entangled in surprising and heartbreaking ways. Dresden is cursed. He houses a hive of bees in his chest, which he cant stop from stinging people with psychosis-inducing venom. He has been this way for centuries - since he was eighteen and magic flowed through his homeland, corrupting its people. He follows a troupe of harbingers of death to a Midwest town marked for impending disaster. There, he encounters Essie, a seventeen-year-old girl who suffers from debilitating delusions and hallucinations. His bees want to sting her on sight, but Essie doesnt see a monster when she looks at Dresden, prompting him to hold back his bees and spare her. What starts out as a simple act of mercy ends up unraveling Dresdens solitary life and Essies tormented one. An impossible romance blooms, even as Essie is pulled into a murder investigation and Dresden embarks on a desperate quest to unravel a centuries-old curse.

 

 

This book is part of a book series called Black Bird Of the Gallows .

This book has been graded for interest at 14 years.

There are 304 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2020 by Entangled Publishing, LLC .

Meg Kassel is an author of paranormal and speculative books for young adults. A New Jersey native, Meg graduated from Parson's School of Design and worked as a graphic designer before becoming a writer. She now lives in Maine with her husband and daughter and is busy at work on her next novel. She is the 2016 RWA Golden Heart(c) winner in YA. Her debut novel, Black Bird of the Gallows , releases fall of 2017.