Excerpt from Endling by Maria Reva, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Before the romance tours, Yeva had relied on government and NGO grants, which had dwindled in recent years. Who wants to fund the research on functionally extinct species? People like Yeva are never the stars of environmental summits and galas, prattling on and on about yet another battle lost, yet another species gone down the chute. Donors only want to fund winners.

That evening, holding the raffle money in her hands, for the first time in her life Yeva felt like a winner. Later she suspected that the raffle was rigged in favor of newcomers to pull them into more of these weird parties, but winning felt good at the time. And one thousand USD got her far: a new multi-stage filtration and misting system, specialized full-spectrum lighting with automated dimming, a sanitization chamber for soil (secondhand, but still good), more realistic terrarium landscaping that included live moss.

Soon Yeva started going on dates with the foreigners. The work-though she'd never admit it to the whiny interpreterswas easy. She quickly understood that the marriage agency didn't expect her to actually marry any of the men it carted in from the West. Sure, a few women really were there to find love- "Needles," they were unofficially called. But then there was everyone else, the shining golden hay, just there to populate the parties, show up for a date or two, keep the bride-to-bachelor ratio high. Yeva didn't mind being the agency's shimmering bait, her headshot plastered all over their website. Let these men come here to look for their Needles in the hay. The hunt must be part of the thrill, she figured, what kept some men coming back tour after tour. Meanwhile, women like Yeva-nicknamed "Brides"-could also return tour after tour and, without bending any rules, make decent money. In fact, the agency endorsed the practice: any gifts ordered by bachelors through the agency-gym membership, cooking class, customizable charm bracelet-could be redeemed by the brides for cash from the agency offices. And most reliably, the hourly interpreter fee had to be split with brides after each date (this, with a great condescending sigh from the interpreters, as if they were being charitable, as if they were doing all the work). Even if the brides spoke English, which Yeva and many others did, the bachelors were not allowed to converse with the brides without these middle-women present. Translation apps on phones were also no-nos. What's less romantic than a lady and gentleman on a date, eyes glued to their phones? Translation apps drained transnational love of its mystique, Efrosinia and her assistants lamented. Yeva had heard of brides who went further than receiving and redeeming gifts, who outright scammed the men through kickbacks with overpriced restaurants, or through fake medical procedures they said they needed to fund, but in Yeva's estimation this wasn't worth the effort or the risk. She did fine just by showing up, date after date, racking up hours like in any other job.

Soon Yeva had refurbished her entire lab. New decontamination bath for foods introduced to the trailer, a backup generator, a solar panel for the summer months, upgraded software for alerting her phone whenever humidity, temperature, light levels rose or fell outside tolerance. She traveled around the country looking for survivors, knowing that when she ran low on funds she could dip into one of the many cities and towns that were part of the romance tours and top up. No more paperwork that ate into fieldwork, no more waiting for measly grants while species slipped through her fingers like sand.

(She should have been more careful, she knew. Should have waited to raise enough funds to establish a captive rearing lab with a dedicated staff, a stationary haven for gastropod populations while she conducted evacuations. She should have endured the slow grind of bureaucracy: applying for grants, collaborating with university labs, playing politics, and tiptoeing around the egos of the older researchers, many of whom still ascribed to an outdated Soviet-era taxonomy that didn't even recognize some of the most endangered species as distinct. If only there had been time. But she'd had to go rogue, haul the lab with her.)

Excerpted from Endling by Maria Reva. Copyright © 2025 by Maria Reva. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.