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The
Beekeeper's Apprentice
See Michelle's
recommendation page for a complete synopsis.
A
Monstrous Regiment of Women
The dawn of
1921 finds Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes's brilliant young apprentice, about
to come into a considerable inheritance. Nevertheless, she still enjoys her
nighttime prowls in disguise through London's grimy streets, where one night
she encounters an old friend, now a charity worker among the poor. Veronica
Beaconsfield introuduces Russell to the New Temple of God, a curious amalgam
of church and feminist movement, led by the enigmatic, electrifying Margery Childe.
Part suffragette, part mystic, she lives quite well for a woman of God from
supposedly humble origins. Despite herself, Russell is drawn ever deeper into
Childe's circle. When Veronica has a near-fatal accident--and turns out to be
the fourth bluestocking in teh group to meet with a misadventure after changing
her will--Russell and Holmes launch a quiet investiagtion. But the Temple may
bring the newly rich Russell far closer to heaven than she would like...
A
Letter of Mary
Late in the
summer of 1923, Mary Russell Holmes and her husband, the illustrious Sherlock
Holmes, are ensconced in their home on the Sussex Downs, giving themselves over
to their studies: Russell to her theology, and Holmes to his malodorous chemical
experiments. Interrupting the idyllic scene, amateur archaeologist Miss Dorothy
Ruskin visits with a startling puzzle. Working in the Holy Land, she has unearthed
a tattered roll of papyrus with a message from Mary Magdalene. Miss Ruskin wants
Russell to safeguard the letter. But when Miss Ruskin is killed in a traffic
accident, Russell and Holmes find themselves on the trail of a fiendishly clever
murderer. Clearly there was more to Miss Ruskin than met the eye. But why was
she murdered? Was it her involvement in the volatile politics of the Holy Land?
Was it her championing of women's rights? Or was it the scroll--a deeply troubling
letter that could prove to be a biblical bombshell? In either case, Russell
and Holmes soon find that solving her murder may be murder itself.
The
Moor
Barely has
Mary Russell resumed her 1923 studies at Oxford when she is summoned by her
partner and husband Sherlock Holmes to the eerie scene of his most celebrated
case. But this time, on Dartmoor, there is more to the matter than a phantom
hound. Sightings of a spectral coach carrying a long-dead noblewoman over the
moonlit moor have heralded a mysterious death, the corpse surrounded by oversize
paw prints. Here on this wild and foreboding moor, Russell and Holmes embark
on a quest with few clues save a fanatic anthropologist, an ancestral portrait,
a moorland witch, and a lowly--but most revealing--hedgehog. As Holmes and Russell
anticipate, a rational explanation lies beneath the supernatural events--but
one darker than they could have imagined. And one that could end their lives
in this harsh and desolate land.
O
Jerusalem
At the close
of the year 1918, forced to flee England's green and pleasant land, Russell
and Holmes enter British-occupied Palestine under the auspices of Holmes' enigmatic
brother, Mycroft. "Gentlemen,
we are at your service." Thus Holmes greets the two travel-grimed Arab
figures who receive them in the orange groves fringing the Holy Land. Whatever
role could the volatile Ali and the taciturn Mahmoud play in Mycroft's design
for this land the British so recently wrested from the Turks? After passing
a series of tests, Holmes and Russell learn their guides are engaged in a mission
for His Majesty's Government, and disguise themselves as Bedouins--Russell as
the beardless youth "Amir"--to join them in a stealthy reconnaissance
through the dusty countryside. A recent rash of murders seems unrelated to the
growing tensions between Jew, Moslem, and Christian, yet Holmes is adamant that
he must reconstruct the most recent one in the desert gully where it occurred.
His singular findings will lead him and Russell through labyrinthine bazaars,
verminous inns, cliff-hung monasteries--and into mortal danger. When her mentor's
inquiries jeopardize his life, Russell fearlessly wields a pistol and even assays
the arts of seduction to save him. Bruised and bloodied, the pair ascend to
the jewellike city of Jerusalem, where they will at last meet their adversary,
whose lust for savagery and power could reduce the city's most ancient and sacred
place to rubble and ignite this tinderbox of a land....
Justice
Hall
Just hours
after Holmes and Russell return from solving the murky riddle of "The Moor", a
bloodied but oddly familiar stranger pounds desperately on their front door,
pleads for their help, and then collapses. When he recovers, he lays before
them the story of the enigmatic Marsh Hughenfort, younger brother of the Duke
of Beauville, returned to England upon his brother's death. Not until Holmes
and Russell arrive in the village of Arley Holt can they fully understand Marsh's
dilemma. For Justice Hall is a home of dizzying beauty and unearthly perfection,
set in a garden modeled on Paradise. Russell longs for what it represents: permanence,
history, the kind of roots that reach back for centuries. But Holmes senses
the burdens echoed in the family motto, "Justitia fortitudo mea est". And as Marsh
seeks to live by the words, "Righteousness is my strength," he is
determined to learn the truth about the untimely death of Justice Hall's
expected heir...a puzzle he is convinced only Holmes and Russell can solve.
It's a mystery that begins during the Great War of 1918, when young Gabriel
Hughenfort, the late Duke's only son, died amidst scandalous rumors that
have haunted the family ever since. While Holmes heads to London to uncover
the truth of Gabriel's war record, Russell joins an ill-fated shooting
party. A missing diary, a purloined bundle of letters, and a trail of ominous
clues comprise a mystery that will call for Holmes's cleverest disguises
and Russell's most daring journeys into the unknown...from an English hamlet
to the city of Paris to the wild prairie of the New World. The trap is set,
the game is afoot, but can they catch an elusive villain in the act of murder
before they become his next victims?
For additional titles in this series, click HERE to link to the NOBLE catalog.
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