Awards

• Short-listed for Best Book Award 2021 (United States)
• Short-listed for Best Second Novel 2023 (United States)
• Winner of Best Cover Design 2023 (United States)

Overview

Film and TV Interest:The Hive is ready for the big screen! Film rights have been optioned by Sony Pictures Television with Josh Burman (Bones, CSI, Drop Dead Diva) producing. Award-winning author: Melissa Scholes Young is the author of the novel Flood, winner of the Literary Fiction Category for the 2017 Best Book Award from American Book Fest. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, Washington Post, Narrative, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, and Poets & Writers. She's a Contributing Editor for Fiction Writers Review and Editor of Grace in Darkness: D.C. Women Writers. Modern Day Coming-of-Age: Political, patriarchal, and societal pressures are delicately crafted and interwoven throughout, creating an enthralling and highly readable narrative.

Full Product Details

9781684426447

Table of Contents

Reviews

I love books about sisters, and I love The Hive, which has all the eccentricity and yearning of some of my favorite sister stories, like We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and Sisters By a River by Barbara Comyns. From the very first chapter, The Hive is a deft, delightfully weird, and often comical family saga. -Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief The Hive is real and raw and will pin you back in your seat. The Fahler family is beautifully rendered in their messy complexity-flawed, tragic, and hopeful, all at once. I loved it. -Alex George, author of The Paris Hours, owner of Skylark Bookshop You'll buzz through The Hive, Melissa Scholes Young's vibrant second novel about a close family and their closely held secrets. A loving portrait of a family that closes ranks even as it opens its heart. -Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of Man Alive! Much like an epic Jane Smiley novel, Melissa Scholes Young transports us to rural America, inside a family-owned pest control business and four sisters' struggle to keep it afloat in a changing political landscape. The Hive is a moving and completely immersive reading experience. -Marcy Dermansky, author of Very Nice [An] authentic and deeply felt novel that could only be crafted from personal experience. Melissa Scholes Young gracefully and compassionately captures the moving story of four young women seeking out their own independence while drawn, inexorably, back, and back again, into the family business. -Dean Bakopoulos, author of Summerlong The Hive is a rich and complex family narrative. Melissa Scholes Young gives us the story of a family-owned exterminator company and the family that runs it. Imperfect, real, and true-to-life characters are presented in a page-turning story line that book clubs will devour! -Mary Webber O'Malley, bookseller at Skylark Bookshop Kudos to Melissa Scholes Young. The Hive is the family saga I have been waiting for. -Pamela Klinger-Horn, Valley Bookseller Filled with the messiness of family emotions and presumptions, along with the age-old question of 'who do I want to be and how do I fit in?' this sweet and delightfully quirky novel will draw you in and not let go. -Betsy Von Kerens, bookseller at The Bookworm Omaha I know a book is good when I wake up at 4am on a Sunday and pick up where I left off . . . a front row seat to the challenges women face in a small town in Midwest America. -Shelf Unbound Readers won't easily forget the voices of the Fehler women. -Portland Book Review What carries The Hive more than the themes and the characters is the gorgeousness of the prose. Sholes Young invites us into the Fehler family dynamic and the fascination of white Midwestern lifestyles with potent language. -Mom Egg Review A captivating story . . . The Hive a novel worth reading. -Washington Independent Review of Books How about a nice, new family drama with more than its share of comic spirit, marked by its Midwestern flavor? The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young. -Chicago Tribune The Hive is a memorable saga of sisterhood, life-testing challenges, and ties that bind. Highly recommended. -Midwest Book Review An honest and stunningly beautiful portrait of life in rural America that readers from all walks of life will appreciate. -Travis Naughton, Boone County Journal

The Hive is a rich and complex family narrative. Melissa Scholes Young gives us the story of a family-owned exterminator company and the family that runs it. Imperfect, real, and true-to-life characters are presented in a page-turning story line that book clubs will devour! -Mary Webber O'Malley, Skylark Bookshop You'll buzz through The Hive, Melissa Scholes Young's vibrant second novel about a close family and their closely held secrets. In a small conservative town, where Mark Twain scholars abide with Rush Limbaugh followers, four daughters and their mother try to save the family's exterminating business. Each yearns to be true to herself and the hive, as loyalty wrestles with self-discovery. A loving portrait of a family that closes ranks even as it opens its heart. -Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of Man Alive! I love books about sisters, and I love The Hive, which has all the eccentricity and yearning of some of my favorite sister stories, like We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and Sisters By a River by Barbara Comyns. From the very first chapter, The Hive is a deft, delightfully weird, and often comical family saga. -Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief There may be no person more fatalistic than the child of a small business owner in rural America-your destiny sits down to dinner with you every night. In The Hive, the kind of authentic and deeply felt novel that could only be crafted from personal experience, the Fehler sisters grapple with grief, regret, and their mother's secrets as they reel from the sudden death of their father, a successful small-town exterminator, and his surprise plan of succession. As so often happens in the contemporary Midwest, the family's internal struggles become enmeshed in the deepening political divide around them, as Melissa Scholes Young gracefully and compassionately captures the moving story of four young women seeking out their own independence while drawn, inexorably, back, and back again, into the family business. -Dean Bakopoulos, author of Summerlong I love when an author takes me someplace I've never been. Much like an epic Jane Smiley novel, Melissa Scholes Young transports us to rural America, inside a family-owned pest control business and four sisters' struggle to keep it afloat in a changing political landscape. The Hive is a moving and completely immersive reading experience. -Marcy Dermansky, author of Very Nice The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young is real and raw and will pin you back in your seat. It's a powerful portrait of a family coming to terms with a changing world that some are ready for, and others are not. The Fahler family is beautifully rendered in their messy complexity-flawed, tragic, and hopeful, all at once. I loved it. -Alex George, author of The Paris Hours, owner of Skylark Bookshop The Fehler clan does everything it can to protect the hive, but it is not until their father dies that the 'bug girls' can fully complete their metamorphosis. The Hive has so many things that readers look for in a novel-great characters and musings on family dynamics, feminism, and grief. The sisters will stay with you long after you make the journey with them to break free, take adventures, accept risks, make choices, have hope. Kudos to Melissa Scholes Young. The Hive is the family saga I have been waiting for. -Pamela Klinger-Horn, Valley Bookseller I thoroughly enjoyed The Hive. Melissa Scholes Young drops us into a midwestern family as they are facing an uncertain future. Four daughters and their mother must navigate what is expected of them from tradition and their community, but ultimately each confronts what is needed to survive and thrive. -Julie Slavinsky, Warwick's When a sudden catastrophic event leaves the women of the Fehler family and exterminating business feeling betrayed and abandoned they each must find their own way of dealing with adversity. Filled with the messiness of family emotions and presumptions, along with the age-old question of 'who do I want to be and how do I fit in?' this sweet and delightfully quirky novel will draw you in and not let go. -Betsy Von Kerens, The Bookworm Omaha I know a book is good when I wake up at 4am on a Sunday and pick up where I left off... a front row seat to the challenges women face in a small town in Midwest America. -Shelf Unbound Readers won't easily forget the voices of the Fehler women. -Portland Book Review What carries The Hive more than the themes and the characters is the gorgeousness of the prose. Sholes Young invites us into the Fehler family dynamic and the fascination of white Midwestern lifestyles with potent language. -Mom Egg Review A captivating story...The Hive a novel worth reading. -Washington Independent Review of Books How about a nice, new family drama with more than its share of comic spirit, marked by its Midwestern flavor? The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young. -Chicago Tribune The Hive is a memorable saga of sisterhood, life-testing challenges, and ties that bind, highly recommended. -Midwest Book Review

Author Information

Melissa Scholes Young is the author of the novels The Hive and Flood and the editor of Grace in Darkness and Furious Gravity—two anthologies by women writers. She is a contributing editor at Fiction Writers Review, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Ms., Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Ploughshares, Literary Hub, and the Believer. She has been the recipient of the Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Foundation Residency Fellowship, the Center for Mark Twain Studies' Quarry Farm Fellowship, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowship. Born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, she is an associate professor in Literature at American University. 

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