100,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

Thanks for supporting our 100% NZ-owned independent bookstore ❤️ Overnight NZ-wide Delivery 🚀

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Introducing Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Set in 1915, The Beekeeper's Apprentice introduces a retired Sherlock Holmes who is quietly studying honeybees on the Sussex Downs. When Mary Russell, a sharp-witted fifteen-year-old orphan, literally stumbles into his life, she quickly proves herself a worthy apprentice and intellectual equal. Together, they face a dangerous adversary determined to end their partnership, making this their first thrilling case.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$2799
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 4-6 weeks

Found a better price? Request a price match

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This engaging crime thriller appeals to fans of classic detective stories and readers who appreciate strong, intelligent female protagonists and clever plot twists.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes - and match him wit for wit. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern twentieth-century woman proves a deft protegee and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees when a young woman literally stumbles into 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— and match him wit for wit.

Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern twentieth-century woman proves a deft protégé and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective. But even in their first case together, the pair face a truly cunning adversary who will stop at nothing to put an end to their partnership.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King introduces readers to an intriguing dynamic between a legendary detective and an astute young woman, setting the stage for an unforgettable collaboration.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Booklist praised the novel as "wonderfully original and entertaining - absorbing from beginning to end."

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780749008529

Publisher: Allison & Busby

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 05 August 2010

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Allison & Busby

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 0g

Pages: 448

About the Author

Laurie R. King is the first novelist since Patricia Cornwell to win prizes for Best First Crime Novel on both sides of the Atlantic with the publication of her debut thriller, A Grave Talent. She is the best-selling author of seven Mary Russell mysteries, four contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, and the best-selling novels A Darker Place and Folly. She lives in northern California.

Also by Laurie R. King

View all
  • Locked Rooms
    In 1924, San Francisco is booming. The great fire and earthquake of 1906 cleared the ground for a modern city, but the closer she comes to the place she used to call home, the more troubling Mary Russell’s dreams become... As Russell and her husband, the eminent Sherlock Holmes, attempt to settle their affairs in the City by the Bay,...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Dreaming Spies
    1925. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes arrive home to find a stone. The stone is inscribed with the same name that they last saw in the Tokyo garden of the future emperor of Japan. It is the first indication that the investigation they did for him a year ago might not be as complete as they had thought. In Japan...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Castle Shade
    The queen, a famous beauty who has singlehandedly transformed Roumania from a backwater into a force to be reckoned with, invites the pair to Bran castle. The ancient fortress sits on the border with the newly-regained territory of Transylvania, and was a gift to Queen Marie from her people. The threat the queen fears is somewhat dubious: shadowy figures, vague...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Lantern's Dance
    September 1925. After their recent adventures in Transylvania, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes look forward to spending time with Holmes' son, the famous artist Damian Adler, and his family in the French countryside. But when they arrive at Damian's house, they discover that the Adlers have fled from a mysterious threat. In the ominously empty house, Russell discovers several crates...
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Garment of Shadows
    In a strange room in Morocco, Mary Russell is trying to solve a pressing mystery: Who am I? She has awakened with shadows in her mind, blood on her hands, and soldiers pounding on the door. Out in the hive-like streets, she discovers herself strangely adept in the skills of the underworld, escaping through alleys and rooftops, picking pockets and...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Lantern's Dance
    September, 1925. After their recent adventures in Transylvania, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes look forward to spending time with Holmes' son, the famous artist Damian Adler, and his family. But when they arrive at Damian's house in the French countryside, they discover that the Adlers have fled from a mysterious threat. In the ominously empty house, Russell discovers four crates packed with memorabilia related to the...
    Hardback
    $4500
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • A Letter of Mary
    1923. Mary Russell Holmes and her husband, the retired Sherlock Holmes, are enjoying summer on their Sussex estate when they are visited by Miss Dorothy Ruskin, an archaeologist just returned from Palestine. She leaves in their protection an ancient manuscript which hints that Mary Magdalene was an apostle—an artefact certain to stir up a storm in the Christian establishment. When...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Pirate King
    The latest adventure for the intrepid Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, takes readers into the frenetic world of silent films, where the pirates are real and the shooting isn't all done with cameras. In England's young silent-film industry, the megalomaniacal Randolph Fflytte is king. Nevertheless, Mary Russell is dispatched to investigate the criminal activities that surround Fflytte's popular...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Knave of Diamonds
    When Mary Russell was a child, she adored her Uncle Jake, the black sheep of the family. But she hasn't heard from him in many years, until he presents himself at her door with an abundance of problems for his clever niece to deal with. Not the least of which is the reason the family rejected him in the first...
    Hardback
    $5500
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Knave of Diamonds
    When Mary Russell was a child, she adored her Uncle Jake, the black sheep of the family. But she hasn't heard from him in many years, until he presents himself at her door with an abundance of problems for his clever niece to deal with. Not the least of which is the reason the family rejected him in the first...
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • Riviera Gold
    It's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the...
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • The Moor
    In the eerie wasteland of Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes summons his devoted wife and partner, Mary Russell, from her studies at Oxford to aid the investigation of a death and some disturbing phenomena of a decidedly supernatural origin. Through the mists of the moor, there have been sightings of a spectral coach made of bones carrying a woman long-ago accused of...
    Paperback
    Sold Out

More from Crime & Thriller

View all
  • New Release
    Dying Days
    Award-winning writer delivers a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. Missing soldiers, MI6 secrets and European partisans collide in a deadly game where the lines between lies and reality are fast disintegrating. In the dying days of the Second World War, a new conflict is about to ignite. May, 1945: After fighting to liberate Europe from the Nazis, Tito's Yugoslav Army and Allied...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • The Country Road Murders
    New Release
    The Country Road Murders
    From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes a pulse-pounding thriller about justice, vengeance and the roads that lead us home. No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent - which is what Jim has, in spades — LEE CHILD Cross Rivers is the kind of small town where everyone knows your name – and your secrets. Silas Tucker...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    Every Lake
    Scary stories are fun... until your life becomes one. When Alice was fifteen, her father killed Mia Heywood in their lakefront cottage before vanishing into the trees. At least that's what the locals think happened. Over a decade later, Alice has lost her job as a journalist, she's going through an expensive divorce and she desperately needs to sell the...
    Paperback
    $3299
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Nautilus
    New Release
    Nautilus
    The follow-up to the bestselling novel The Turing Protocol. Nautilus is a machine with the astonishing power to send messages eight weeks back in time. Its users must follow a set of protocols established by its inventor, Alan Turing, including that it can only be used by a descendant of his family, and only to avert global disasters. But what...
    Paperback
    $2999
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Cold River
    New Release
    Cold River
    The sensational new novel from the author of the bestselling thriller, The Creeper, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2025. Deep in the mountains, secrets grow deadly... Detective Constable Sally White knows how easily hikers can go missing in Victoria's high country. But there's something about the disappearance of Louis Taylor, a young man lost up...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    It Could Have Been Her
    PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1 Sunday Times and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    26 Beauties
    The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    The Secrets We Hide
    The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author of We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    The Parkwood Murders
    They came for an escape, but can they escape a killer? Detective Nicola Bridge returns in another gripping and immersive mystery For its loyal guests, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven- woodland walks, a tranquil lake, service around the clock. Until, just after midsummer, a body is found floating in the swimming pool. Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Hope Rises
    'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    Slash
    A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators — while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son — a double-murder suspect last seen during the...
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    A River Red With Blood
    The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.