The Bug Diary

While experimenting with substances in the university library, Kymer is confronted by a ghost from KU’s past: Carrie Watson, the librarian who is the library’s namesake. Carrie gives Kymer the insect field journal of Flora Ellen Richardson, the first woman to graduate from KU. When Kymer reviews the bug diary, she realizes there’s a bee in Flora’s journal that’s never before been identified by science. A wild ride ensues changing the world of entomology, and her personal world, forever. The freshman year away at college can be a challenge—studying, partying, making friends, finding a hookup—but when Freshman Kymer Charvat indulges in recreational drugs with her new friends, an on-campus ghost hands her a mystery to solve. An entomology major entering her first year of college at a far-away mid-western school, Kymer is ready to disengage from her superficial, social-climbing mother. However, this also means leaving her boyfriend behind in Maryland. Soon, she becomes fast friends with her new dorm roommate, Siren, a bold and bosomed young woman with a complicated background, and her classmate, Mattie, an exuberant, gay Black man whose family owns a local restaurant and embraces Kymer and Siren like their own. Together, the trio experience college life at its fullest, which includes some harmless drinking and drug experimentation. Kymer finds herself in need of spending money and manages to land her first real job in the university’s natural history museum gift shop. One afternoon, the three friends get high and take a bus to the museum for fun. That’s when a second campus ghost, naturalist and professor Lewis Lynsey Dyche, approaches Kymer to give her another hint to help her identify the mystery bee in Flora’s bug diary. Soon, classifying the mystery bee is Kymer’s main drive. The Bug Diary takes the reader on a wild review of history and bugs, and a laugh-out-loud exploration of campus life! New Adult & College Fantasy.

About the Author

Amber Fraley is your typical Gen Xer suburban Kansas wife and mom of one who grew up a book nerd in a dysfunctional family and now writes about those experiences as hilarious therapy. She's the author of the darkly humorous essay collection From Kansas, Not Dorothy, and the viral essay Gen X Will Not Go Quietly, as well as numerous human interest articles. Amber loves Kansas with all her heart, is frequently awkward in public, and desperately wishes to see a tornado and live to tell the tale.

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