Is the chance to serve as an extra for Hitler's favorite filmmaker a chance at life -- or a detour on the path to inevitable extermination? In this chilling but ultimately uplifting novel, Kathryn Lasky imagines the lives of the Gypsies who worked as extras for the real Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, giving readers a story of survival unlike any other.

Buster, a walnut orb weaving spider, enlists the help of Jo Beth, one of a family of poisonous but friendly brown recluse spiders, to help stop humans who are stealing from the rare books room of the Boston Public Library, where the spiders live.