The Deadlies, a family of brown recluse spiders, have found a home in the rare book section of the Boston Public Library.  Kathryn Lasky is known for her series about owls, Guardians of Ga’Hoole, her series about wolves, Wolves of Beyond, and her contributions to the Dear America series with biographies of people in history.  She has expanded her research to begin a new fiction series including facts about spiders.

Buster, a brown walnut spider, meets Jo Bell and her brown recluse family.  Tom, the human curator, welcomes them because he knows they eat silverfish, cockroaches, and other bugs that damage books.  Jo Bell and Buster discover thieves cutting pages from the rare books.  With the family, they weave a plan to inform Tom so he can stop the destruction.  Readers will learn about spiders as well as a bit about the Dewey decimal system.  Kathryn Lasky includes pages of notes in the back about things that are true, things that are not, and things in-between.  One is a warning about handling brown recluse spiders.