The Bees Audiobook (Free)

Shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize for New Fiction 2015

Enter a complete new world, in this thrilling debut book collection entirely within a beehive.

Born into the lowest course of her society, Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, only fit to clean her orchard hive. Living to simply accept, obey and serve, she actually is prepared to sacrifice everything for her beloved holy mother, the Queen.

But Flora isn’t like about The Bees additional bees. Despite her ugliness she’s talents that aren’t standard of her kin. While mutant bees are usually instantly destroyed, Flora is taken off sanitation duty and is allowed to feed the newborns, before learning to be a forager, collecting pollen over the wing. She also finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers secrets both sublime and ominous.

But enemies are everywhere, through the fearsome fertility police to the high priestesses who jealously safeguard the Hive Mind. And when Flora breaks probably the most sacred laws of most her instinct to serve can be overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a brutal love which will result in the unthinkable .

Laline Paull’s chilling yet ultimately triumphant novel creates a luminous world both alien and uncannily familiar. Fascinating and imaginative, ‘The Bees’ is the story of a heroine who, when confronted with an increasingly desperate struggle for survival, changes her future and her globe.