In the Australian city of Nambour, a young man, Luther Smart, is pushed onto railway tracks and killed by an oncoming train. Nearby teens jostle and laugh, with one, Grayce Rose filming the event on her phone, later uploading the footage to social media. After a public outcry, Grayce's mother hires a PR agent for her daughter in the hope of promoting Grayce for modelling work. The teen who is identified through security footage, Victor Wiltshire, is publicly called out, and privately bullied through social media, all while facing a future of years in jail. Weeks later, a teen, distraught from relentless cyberbullying, hangs herself in her bedroom. Could the events possibly be related? Senior Sergeant Sean Patrick is determined to bring the guilty parties to justice before he too, succumbs to his own darkness. Lepidoptera is intriguing and gritty look at darker side of modern teen life; this fast-paced young adult novella touches on many of the important issues facing teenagers today: narcissism, the desensitising effects of violence and trauma; the role played by social media in character assassination and bullying - all of which are timely topics for today's families. A must read for young people, their parents and caregivers. PRAISE FOR LEPIDOPTERA: "The story is told through a collection of documents, without an overt master narrator; these documents subtly and suggestively unfold issues and events, often steering the narrative sideways or bending around to build the novella's messages.A sobering and very effective work of fiction which explores the alarming tendency in today's society to valorise physical attributes over mental skills or moral values and to reward narcissistic personalities rather than cautioning them. The metaphor of the butterfly is a potent one." Prof. N. Krauth, Griffith University, Editor TEXT Magazine "Lepidoptera is an insightful and exciting work guaranteed to create readership discussion of important adolescent issues. The most impessive aspect of the novella is the beautiful control exercised over the sequencing of materials and the decisions about what to include in them - rarely does the author explain too much. The skilful strategies exercised here indicate the author's deep knowledge of the multimodal reading capacities of the target young adult audience. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Lepidoptera' - it entertains as well as educates and it is a great read for the young adults' parents as well as the young people themselves." R. Sheahan-Bright, Publishing Consultant, Justified Text