Attention all Mary Russell fans. This spring marks the 15th anniversary of The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King's first novel in her wonderful mystery series featuring Sherlock Holmes and the unflappable Mary Russell. It also marks the 150th birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. To celebrate those two events, as well as the publication of The Language of Bees--the 9th book in the series, Ms. King is putting on Fifteen Weeks of Bees. The festivities will be grand and will include, among other things, a blog tour, contests, free downloads, and more! 
A dear friend of mine (Hey, CK!) introduced me to this series several years ago while we were both faithful members of Readerville and the YARG (may it rest in peace). I fell in love right away and have enjoyed not only each subsequent installment but passing them on to other appreciative readers. If you like literary mysteries and haven't dipped into this series, now would be a great time. And if you have, spread the word about the goodness that is the Mary Russell books.
A full press release is found here.
I've often wondered whether, if these books had been written a few years later, BEEK might not have been pushed as a YA novel. Possibly not given the direction of the series after that point, but of course those books had not been written yet...
ReplyDeleteStill one of my favorite books of all time, in any case.
RJ, according to King's site it was chosen as a Notable YA book by the ALA. But I agree, it would have done well marketed YA. I've seen several publishers repackage novels for the YA market, perhaps they'll eventually do that with BEEK.
ReplyDelete*Waves to Angie and RJ*
ReplyDeleteI'd really love to see at least the first two books in the series offered in the YA sections of bookstores and libraries. Those were two of the most dearly beloved of the teens in the R'ville YARG. It was several of those girls, in fact, who twisted my arm into reading BEEK and I'll be forever grateful. I loved them so much I went on to read the whole series, all of Laurie's other books and then lots of other mystery series (after a lifetime of avoiding the genre). And now I even help Laurie run her Virtual Book Club. *Happy dance!*
Thanks for posting the 15 Weeks announcement! It's turning out to be great fun, and Mary Russell is even twittering and blogging!
twitter.com/mary_russell
myspace.com/maryrussell
And of course there are lots of prizes and giveaways and other cool stuff. Wheee! :D
Vicki, how did you get to know Laurie and get involved running the VBC? I can't think of someone better suited to the job. You are the YARG Goddess, after all. And you wield the Frying Pan of Doom.
ReplyDeleteOff to check out Russell's tweets...
I met Laurie via email when I invited her to the YARG discussion of the first two Russells. I helped her with a few issues behind the scenes that month--getting her account set up and that sort of thing. And wasn't she a terrific guest? She even handled Boromir's (our resident Holmes purist) heckling and exclamations with great aplomb. Go Laurie!
ReplyDeleteAfter that, I kept in touch with her from time to time. And one day a couple of years back, she emailed saying she wanted to start a forum and would I like to run it. And, being in something of a transitional phase, I jumped at it. And we've been having fun ever since.
We've started having LRK fan meet-ups at Bouchercon (this year's is in Indianapolis in Oct. *dangle, dangle*), expanded social media outreach, set up Cafepress and Amazon stores (both of which benefit Heifer International's beehive project--cool!) and we've just now started a YA thread in the forum (YAY!) called Russell's Irregulars--for YA lit fans of all ages :D
http://www.laurierking.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=566
Oh, and did I mention how much I love spreading the love for some of my very favorite books ever? :D :D :D :D :D