{"product_id":"the-language-of-bees-isbn-9780553588347","title":"The Language of Bees","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER \u003c\/b\u003e• \u003cb\u003e“[Laurie R.] King enriches the Sherlockian legacy.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad was especially sweet. There was even a mystery to solve—the unexplained disappearance of an entire colony of bees from one of Holmes’s beloved hives.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the anticipated sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by a galling memory from the past. Mary had met Damian Adler only once before, when the surrealist painter had been charged with—and exonerated from—murder. Now the troubled young man is enlisting the Holmeses’ help again, this time in a desperate search for his missing wife and child.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMary has often observed that there are many kinds of madness, and before this case yields its shattering solution she’ll come into dangerous contact with a fair number of them. From suicides at Stonehenge to the dark secrets of a young woman’s past on the streets of Shanghai, Mary will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any she’s ever faced—a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near and dear to his heart.\"A one-woman case for the defense of unauthorized literary sequels...intelligent, witty, complex and atmospheric...By making a woman possible who matches Holmes in brainpower, as well as in depressive tendencies of mind and spare elegance of manner, King has made marriage possible for the most famous and, surely, one of the most aloof detectives of all time....A spellbinding mystery...superb.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e on \u003cb\u003eJustice Hall\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A wonderful blend of sheer wit and canny ratiocination, this is mystery at its most ingenious.\"—\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e on \u003cb\u003eThe Art of Detection\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mesmerizing...King does a wonderful job of probing the human psyche...All of her novels are superb.\"—\u003ci\u003eDaily American\u003c\/i\u003e on \u003cb\u003eLocked Rooms\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eLaurie R. King\u003c\/b\u003e is the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of thirteen Mary Russell mysteries, five contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, the Stuyvesant \u0026amp; Grey novels \u003ci\u003eTouchstone\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Bones of Paris\u003c\/i\u003e, and the acclaimed \u003ci\u003eA Darker Place, Folly, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Keeping Watch\u003c\/i\u003e. She lives in Northern California.\u003ci\u003eChapter One\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eFirst Birth (1): The boy came into being on a night of celestial alignment,  when a comet travelled the firmament and the sky threw forth a million shooting stars  to herald his arrival. \u003c\/i\u003eTestimony, I:1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  AS HOMECOMINGS GO, IT WAS NOT AUSPICIOUS. The  train was late. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Portsmouth sweltered under a fitful breeze. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sherlock Holmes paced  up and down, smoking one cigarette after another, his already bleak mood growing  darker by the minute. I sat, sinuses swollen with the dregs of a summer cold I’d  picked up in New York, trying to ignore my partner’s mood and my own headache. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Patrick, my farm manager, had come to meet the ship with the post, the day’s newspapers,  and a beaming face; in no time at all the smile was gone, the letters and papers  hastily thrust into my hands, and he had vanished to, he claimed, see what the delay  was about. \u003ci\u003eWelcome home. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eJust as it seemed Holmes was about to fling his coat to  the side and set off for home on foot, whistles blew, doors clattered, and the train roused  itself from torpor. We boarded, flinging our compartment’s windows as far open as  they would go. Patrick cast a wary glance at Holmes and claimed an acquaintance in  the third- class carriage. We removed as many of our outer garments as propriety  would allow, and I tore away the first pages of the newspaper to construct a fan,  cooling myself with the announcements and the agony column. Holmes slumped into the  seat and reached for his cigarette case yet again. I recognised the symptoms, although  I was puzzled as to the cause. Granted, an uneventful week in New York followed by  long days at sea–none of our fellow passengers having been thoughtful enough to bleed  to death in the captain’s cabin, drop down dead of a mysterious poison, or vanish  over the rails–might cause a man like Holmes to chafe at inactivity, nonetheless,  one might imagine that a sea voyage wouldn’t be altogether a burden after seven hard-  pressed months abroad.* And in any case, we were now headed for home, where his bees,  his newspapers, and the home he had created twenty years before awaited him. One  might expect a degree of satisfaction, even anticipation; instead, the man was all  gloom and cigarettes. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I had been married to him for long enough that I did not  even consider addressing the conundrum then and there, but said merely, “Holmes,  if you don’t slow down on that tobacco, your lungs will turn to leather. And mine.  Would you prefer the papers, or the post?” I held out the newspaper, which I had  already skimmed while we were waiting, and took the first item on the other stack,  a picture post- card from Dr Watson showing a village square in Portugal. To my surprise, Holmes  reached past the proffered newspaper and snatched the pile of letters from my lap. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Another oddity. In the normal course of events, Holmes was much attached to the  daily news–several dailies, in fact, when he could get them. Over the previous months,  he had found it so frustrating to be days, even weeks in arrears of current events  (current English events, that is) that one day in northern India, when confronted  with a threeweek- old \u003ci\u003eTimes, \u003c\/i\u003ehe had sworn in disgust and flung the thing onto the fire,  declaring, “I scarcely leave England before the criminal classes swarm like cockroaches.  I cannot bear to hear of their antics.” Since then he had stuck to local papers and  refused all offers of those from London–or, on the rare occasions he had succumbed  to their siren call, he had perused the headlines with the tight- screwed features  of a man palpating a wound: fearing the worst but unable to keep his fingers from  the injury. Frankly, I had been astonished back in Portsmouth when he hadn’t ripped  that day’s \u003ci\u003eTimes \u003c\/i\u003eout of Patrick’s hand. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Now, he dug his way into the post like  a tunnelling badger, tossing out behind him the occasional remark and snippet of  information. Trying to prise conversation out of Sherlock Holmes when he had his teeth  into a project would be akin to tapping said preoccupied badger on the shoulder,  so I took out my handkerchief and used it, and addressed myself first to the uninspiring  view, then to the unread sections of the papers. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Some minutes passed, then: “Mycroft  has no news,” my partner and husband grumbled, allowing the single sheet of his brother’ s ornate calligraphy to drift onto the upholstery beside him. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Is he well?” I asked. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My only reply was the ripping open of the next envelope. On reflection, I decided  that the letter would not say if its writer was well or not: True, Mycroft had been  very ill the previous winter, but even if he were at death’s door, the only reason  he would mention the fact in a letter would be if some urgent piece of business made  his impending demise a piece of information he thought we needed. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Holmes read;  I read. He dropped the next letter, a considerably thicker one, on top of Mycroft’ s, and said in a high and irritated voice, “Mrs Hudson spends three pages lamenting  that she will not be at home to greet us, two pages giving quite unnecessary details  of her friend Mrs Turner’s illness that requires her to remain in Surrey, two more  pages reassuring us that her young assistant Lulu is more than capable, and then  in the final paragraph deigns to mention that one of my hives is going mad.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “  ‘Going mad’? What does that mean?” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He gave an eloquent lift of the fingers to indicate  that her information was as substantial as the air above, and returned to the post. Now,  though, his interest sharpened. He studied the next envelope closely, then held it  to his nose, drawing in a deep and appreciative breath. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Some wives might have cast  a suspicious eye at the fond expression that came over his features. I went back  to my newspapers. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The train rattled, hot wind blew in the window, voices rose and  fell from the next compartment, but around us, the silence grew thick with the press  of words unsaid and problems unfaced. The two surviving aeroplanes from the American  world flight were still in Reykjavík, I noted. And a conference on German war reparations  would begin in London during the week- end. There had been another raid on Bright Young  Things (including some lesser royals) at a country house gathering where cocaine  flowed. Ah–but here was an appropriate interruption to the heavy silence: I read  aloud the latest turn in the Leopold and Loeb sentence hearing, two young men who  had murdered a boy to alleviate tedium, and to prove they could. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Holmes turned  a page. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A few minutes later, I tried again. “Here’s a letter to \u003ci\u003eThe Times \u003c\/i\u003econcerning a  Druid suicide at Stonehenge–or, no, there was a suicide somewhere else, and a small  riot at Stonehenge. Interesting: I hadn’t realised the Druids had staged a return.  I wonder what the Archbishop of Canterbury has to say on the matter?” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He might  have been deaf. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I shot a glance at the letter that so engrossed him, but did not recognise  either the cream stock or the pinched, antique writing. I set down the newspaper  long enough to read first Mrs Hudson’s letter, which I had to admit was more tantalising  than informative, then Mycroft’s brief missive, but when I reached their end, Holmes was  still frowning at the lengthy epistle from his unknown correspondent. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Kicking myself  for failing to bring a sufficient number of books from New York, I resumed \u003ci\u003eThe Times \u003c\/i\u003ewhere, for lack of unread Druidical Letters to the Editor, or Dispatches from Reykjavík,  or even News from Northumberland, I was driven to a survey of the adverts: Debenhams’  sketches delivered the gloomy verdict that I would need my skirt lengths adjusted  again; Thomas Cook offered me educational cruises to Egypt, Berlin, and an upcoming  solar eclipse; the Morris Motors adverts reminded me that it was high time to think about  a new motor- car; and the London Pavilion offered me a Technicolor cowboy adventure  called \u003ci\u003eWanderer in the Wasteland\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “They are swarming,” Holmes said. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I looked  up from the newsprint to stare first at him, then at the thick document in his hand. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Who– Ah,” I said, struck by enlightenment, or at least, memory. “The bees.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He  cocked an eyebrow at me. “You asked what it meant, that the hive had gone mad. It  is swarming. The one beside the burial mound in the far field,” he added. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “That  letter is from your beekeeper friend,” I suggested. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e By way of response, he handed  me the letter. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The cramped writing and the motion of the train combined with the  arcane terminology to render the pages somewhat less illuminating than the personal  adverts in the paper. Over the years I had become tolerably familiar with the language  of keeping bees, and had even from time to time lent an extra pair of arms to some  procedure or other, but this writer’s interests, and expertise, were far beyond mine.  And my nose was too stuffy to detect any odour of honey rising from the pages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  When  I had reached its end, I asked, “How does swarming qualify as madness?” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You read  his letter,” he said. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I read the words.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What did you not–” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Holmes, just  tell me.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The hive is casting swarms, repeatedly. Under normal circumstances, a  hive’s swarming indicates prosperity, a sign that it can well afford to lose half  its population, but in this case, the hive is hemorrhaging bees. He has cleared the  nearby ground, checked for parasites and pests, added a super, even shifted the hive  a short distance. The part where he talks about \u003ci\u003e‘tinnitusque cie et Matris quate  cymbala circum’\u003c\/i\u003e? He wanted to warn me that he’s hung a couple of bells nearby, that being  what Virgil recommends to induce swarms back into a hive.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Desperate measures.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  “He does sound a touch embarrassed. And I cannot picture him standing over the  hive ‘clashing Our Lady’s cymbals,’ which is Virgil’s next prescription.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You’ ve had swarms before.” When bees swarm–following a restless queen to freedom–it depletes  the population of workers. As Holmes had said, this was no problem early in the season,  since they left behind their honey and the next generation of pupae. However, I could  see that doing so time and again would be another matter. “The last swarm went due  north, and ended up attempting to take over an active hive in the vicar’s garden.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  That, I had to agree, was peculiar: Outright theft was pathological behaviour  among bees. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The combination is extraordinary. Perhaps the colony has some sort  of parasite, driving them to madness?” he mused. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What can you do?” I asked, although  I still thought it odd that he should find the behaviour of his insects more engrossing  than dead Druids or the evil acts of spoilt young men. Even the drugs problem should  have caught his attention–that seemed to have increased since the previous summer,  I reflected: How long before Holmes was pulled into that problem once again? \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I  may have to kill them,” he declared, folding away the letter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  “Holmes, that seems  a trifle extreme,” I protested, and only when he gave me a curious look did I recall  that we were talking about bees, not Young Things or religious crackpots. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You  could be right,” he said, and went back to his reading.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI returned to \u003ci\u003eThe Times, \u003c\/i\u003emy eye caught again by the farmer’s letter demanding that a guard be mounted on Stonehenge  at next year’s solstice, so as to avoid either riots or the threat of a dramatic  suicide. I shook my head and turned the page: When it came to communal behaviour, there  were many kinds of madness.New York Times bestseller","brand":"Bantam","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302753816805,"sku":"NP9780553588347","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780553588347.jpg?v=1767740106","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-language-of-bees-isbn-9780553588347","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}