A “raw and fascinating” novel based on the author’s experiences as a New York City paramedic during the crack epidemic—”Burke is a poet of trauma” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross and his first year on the job in mid-’90s Harlem. It is a ground’s eye view of life on the streets: the shootouts, the bad cops, the hopeless patients, the dark humor in bizarre circumstances, and one medic’s struggle to maintain his desire to help despite his growing callousness. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance, and of a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross and his partner into a life-changing struggle between good and evil. “Although Black Flies is a novel, it contains more reflections of lived experience than some memoirs. . . . Reading this arresting, confrontational book is like reading Dispatches, Michael Herr’s indelible account of his years as a reporter in Vietnam.” —The New York Times Book Review

Springtime is wonderful -- except for the gazillion blackflies and mosquitoes. But Helen has a plan . . .

"The Black Files (Simuliidae) of North America" is an authoritative illustrated reference--with importance for ecology, genetics, and conservation--of the black flies in North America including 43 species identified here for the first time.

The majority of blackflies (family Simuliidae) are blood- suckers of man and domestic animals. Throughout the vast territory of the Soviet Union, in the steppes, forest steppes, and especially the taiga and tundra, blackflies occupy a prominent place among the blood-sucking Diptera. It is now clear, that not only in the tropics but throughout the Soviet Union, blackflies are transmitters of several diseases of domestic animals, mainly onchocerciasis of cattle and reindeer and many dangerous diseases of domestic fowl. Hence blackflies are of medico-veterinary and sanitary-epidemiological importance. Unlike other blood-sucking insects such as the malarial mosquito, blackflies have hitherto been relatively poorly studies. The purposes of the present volume is to provide a brief description of species and new identification keys. It primarily incorporates numerous additions to the first edition of "Fauna of the USSR," This second edition also includes 18 species from countries adjoining the Palearctic region, which have not been recorded to-date in the Soviet Union, and 30 species described by Enderlein from Europe (whose description has been improved upon) which may be discovered later in the Soviet Union. The fauna of the USSR currently includes about 300 species of blackflies.

The study of blackflies has come of age--the blackfly is now recognized as a carrier of major endemic diseases; its larval stages are seen to play a major role in the ecology of rivers and streams; and blackfly chromosomes have proved unusually amenable material for cytogenetical studies. The expanded interest in the blackfly has greatly increased the scientific literature about them--literature that is extremely technical, highly specialized, and often of little help to non-specialists. This work bridges the gap between specialists and those whose work brings them in contact with the blackfly, but who need information at a more general level. It synthesizes present knowledge about the natural history of the fly family Simuliidae, covering taxonomic background, elements of larval structure and life in water, adult fly structure, migration, mating, biting and bloodsucking, human diseases, and natural enemies of larval and adult flies. Over 1200 bibliographic citations, a glossary of technical terms, and numerous figures, tables and illustrations are included.

Book 3 in the John Cardinal series It’s spring in Algonquin Bay, and the blackflies are driving people a little mad. Detectives John Cardinal and Lise Delorme have a strange case on their hands: a young woman has wandered bug-bitten out of the Algonquin Bay bush with a gunshot wound to the head. Cardinal becomes obsessed with finding out who the woman is and who is trying to kill her. When the body of a local biker, Wombat Guthrie, is found in a cave, it seems the two cases are related—and the link appears to be a drug dealer and self-proclaimed shaman who calls himself Red Bear.

An oral reading and signing of the book "Old Black Fly" by staff of the McKinley Elementary School and Reddick Library.