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  • The Beekeeper's Apprentice: Or, on the Segregation of the Queen by Laurie R. King book cover
  • The Beekeeper's Apprentice: Or, on the Segregation of the Queen by Laurie R. King book cover
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The Beekeeper's Apprentice: Or, on the Segregation of the Queen

by Laurie R. King

A Holmes mystery with a new apprentice

$17.10 USD
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Awards & Recognition

  • Award recognition

    Agatha Award Best Novel nominee

    Named as an Agatha Award Best Novel nominee.

AlbakiReads Editorial

A Holmes mystery with a new apprentice

Set in Sussex in 1915, Laurie R. King’s novel brings a retired Sherlock Holmes, occupied with beekeeping, into contact with Mary Russell, a sharp-minded fifteen-year-old who has recently been orphaned. Their meeting begins a relationship shaped by Holmes’s reluctant tutelage and Russell’s own intelligence and independence. The historical-mystery premise pairs the familiar figure of Holmes with a young protagonist presented as distinctly modern for her time, while the beekeeping detail supplies a point of connection to the book’s title and setting. This is the opening novel in King’s Mary Russell series.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in historical mysteries featuring Sherlock Holmes.
  • Those who enjoy stories about mentorship and a young woman developing her abilities.
  • Readers looking for the first book in a mystery series.

Themes

MentorshipIntellect and independenceOrphanhoodBeekeepingHistorical mystery

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

The Twentieth-Anniversary Edition of the First Novel of the Acclaimed Mary Russell Series by Edgar Award-Winning Author Laurie R. King.

An Agatha Award Best Novel Nominee - Named One of the Century's Best 100 Mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association

In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees in Sussex when a young woman literally stumbles onto him on the Sussex Downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern, twentieth-century woman proves a deft prot

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