The Beekeeper's Apprentice (preorder)

(preorder—to be published in late 2024/early 2025)

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Grace Aldrich.

Published by Midworld Press.

Note: There is a limit of one copy per person/household.

The 30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of the first in the beloved Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes series, chosen as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association and as an Outstanding Book for the College Bound by the American Library Association, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice has continued to beguile readers of all ages and backgrounds.

The gorgeous MidWorld Press edition of the book will be signed by the author and limited to 300 hand-numbered copies. New dust jacket art, as well as four full-color interior illustrations have been created by artist Grace Aldrich.

About the Book:

I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him.   

In this first of the “Russell Memoirs,” young Mary encounters a retired Sherlock Holmes during the first year of the Great War, and impresses him enough that, reluctantly, he takes her on as his apprentice. It takes a great deal of adjustment—on both sides.

He said nothing. Very sarcastically.

But Russell, as he comes to call her, matures into an Oxford undergraduate with her own strengths and interests—

I crawled into my books and pulled the pages up over my head.   

—until danger comes out of nowhere, and threatens their partnership, and their very lives.

Praise

One of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century

“The interplay between Russell and Holmes as their relationship evolves over the course of the novel’s four years from mentor and student to something much more complex is entirely credible, and the climactic events are dramatic indeed: ‘It burst upon us like a storm, it beat at us and flung us about and threatened our lives, our sanity, and the surprisingly fragile thing that existed between Holmes and myself.’

“That may sound like hyperbole, but just wait till you get there.”
—Neil Nyren, CrimeReads

“As every good mystery reader knows, when Sherlock Holmes quit detection, he retired to the South Downs to keep bees. What he wanted was the quiet life. What he got, according to Laurie King, was a gawky but fiercely intelligent apprentice. Not only that, but this apprentice was a young woman….For my money, Laurie King is the most interesting writer to emerge on the American crime fiction front in recent years. Intelligent, humane, gifted with both talent and insight, she is an unalloyed pleasure to read.”
—Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News

“Imagine Sherlock Holmes retiring to a Sussex farm but keeping his hand in by occasionally investigating cases for the British government…. Then picture Holmes, walking on the Sussex Downs, literally stumbling across a 15 year-old girl whose brilliant intellect, caustic wit, egotistical personality, and gift for detail rival Holmes’ own.”
—Booklist

“King’s novel is civilized, ingenious and engrossing. Best of all, it has heart.”
—Times Literary Review

“Sherlock Holmes, husband and mentor to Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell” was rated as second best “sidekick” of mystery fiction by BOOK magazine (Jan 2004.) From Koko and Yum Yum the cats (Lilian Jackson Braun) to “Mouse” Alexander (Walter Mosley), the winner, with 40 points, was Hawk (Robert B. Parker—and who would dare argue with Hawk?) but second, with 30 points, was Sherlock Holmes.

Edition Information:

• Trim size: 6 x 9 inches
• Binding: Hardcover, quarter bound with Fiscagomma Black on the spine and Brillianta book cloth covering the front and back boards, the text block will be Smyth Sewn and include head and foot bands
• Printed on acid-free 70# Opaque Smooth Natural paper
• Sewn-in ribbon book marker
• 350 pages
• Signed by the author, limited to 300 hand-numbered copies