A respected university professor, Anne Waverly has a past known to few: Years ago, her own unwitting act cost Anne her husband and daughter. Fewer still know that this history and her academic specialty--alternative religious movements--have made her a brilliant FBI operative. Four times she has infiltrated suspect communities, escaping her own memories of loss and carnage to find a measure of atonement. Now, as she begins to savor life once more, she has no intention of taking another assignment. Until she learns of more than one hundred children living in the Change movement's Arizona compound....Anne soon realizes that Change is no ordinary community and hers is no ordinary mission. For, far from appeasing the demons of her past, this assignment is sweeping her back into their clutches...and to the razor's edge of danger.
Laurie R. King has won an Edgar Award and places on best-seller lists for her mysteries. Fans are addicted to her two remarkably successful series, one featuring San Francisco policewoman Kate Martinelli, and the other focusing on Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes' young wife and partner. A Darker Place stands alone. It is a journey into the secretive world of cults. Professor Anne Waverly teaches religious studies at a respected university. Middle-aged and slightly lame, she spends her days in lecture halls and offices. But occasionally she works for the FBI. As Ana Wakefield, an eager seeker of higher truths, she infiltrates cults. Now, leaving the security of academia, she is on her way to Arizona in a battered VW bus. Her assignment is to investigate a group called Change. As Ana gathers information, she is pulled toward a fiery confrontation with the charismatic leader of the cult. But her growing attachment for two of the group's children may require her to make a greater sacrifice. Through Alyssa Bresnahan's rich voice, Ana, FBI agents, and cult members stand out against the darkly compelling fabric of the text.
Fans of Laurie R. King have applauded her fascinating portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Now the Edgar Award–winning author begins an intricate but hard-boiled crime series, spinning a masterful tale that deftly unveils the multiple layers of her intriguing characters.
When?Kate Martinelli, an ambitious rookie, is teamed up with reluctant veteran detective Al Hawkin, they must put aside any reservations they have about each other as they hunt for a sadist who is strangling six-year-old girls. All the clues
point to an artist who has been convicted of a similar crime. But when the evidence begins to look too obvious, Martinelli and Hawkin are forced to use the immensely talented but emotionally fragile artist as bait for the real killer.
King keeps the thread of suspense taut as the precarious investigation twists and turns ever tighter around the obsessive core of a monstrous psychopath.
THE FIRST BOOK IN THE KATE MARTINELLI MYSTERY SERIES
In Laurie R. King's Grave Talent, the unthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. A series of shocking murders has occurred, the victims far too innocent and defenseless. For Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasoned cop who's less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it's a difficult case that just keeps getting harder.
Then the detectives receive what appears to be a case-breaking lead: it seems that one of the residents of this odd colony is Vaun Adams, arguably the century's greatest woman painter and a notorious felon once convicted of a heinous crime.
But what really happened eighteen years ago? To bring a murderer to justice, Kate must delve into the artist's dark pasteven if it means losing everything she holds dear.
Mary Russell, assistant and protegee of the great Sherlock Holmes finds herself and her partner once more mired in mystery. When Mary is given a scrap of papyrus by an old archeologist friend, she has no inkling of what it contains. Written in Greek, it could be a letter from a previously unknown apostle - who just happens to be female. However, the situation moves from being curiously exciting to chillingly perilous, as the archeologist is murdered and Mary and Sherlock's home is ransacked. Given the possible implications of the fragment, the list of suspects and motives seems endless.'
Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell mystery series sizzles with the intellectual and emotional energy that sparkles between world-famous detective Sherlock Holmes and Mary, his young wife and partner. Together, they take on tantalizing cases that break new ground in crime detection.
When an old archaeologist friend gives Mary a curled scrap of papyrus, Mary is startled to see that it is covered with Greek symbols. The writing may be a letter from an unknown—female—apostle. Soon the old friend has been murdered, the
Holmes’ cottage has been ransacked, and Mary is faced with a particularly dangerous and painful investigation.
From the solitude of the English countryside to the dark, teeming streets of London, A Letter of Mary carries the two quick-witted sleuths through a maze of clues and cul-de-sacs. At every turn, the pair realize they are not only solving a murder, but also harboring a relic that could stand Christendom on its ear.
The third book in the Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes series.
It is 1923. Mary Russell Holmes and her husband, the retired Sherlock Holmes, are enjoying the summer together on their Sussex estate when they are visited by an old friend, Miss Dorothy Ruskin, an archeologist just returned from Palestine. She leaves in their protection an ancient manuscript which seems to hint at the possibility that Mary Magdalene was an apostle--an artifact certain to stir up a storm of biblical proportions in the Christian establishment. When Ruskin is suddenly killed in a tragic accident, Russell and Holmes find themselves on the trail of a fiendishly clever murderer. Brimming with political intrigue, theological arcana, and brilliant Holmesian deductions.
While visiting London, Mary Russell comes across a friend from Oxford. The young woman introduces Mary to Margery Childe, charismatic leader of a religious sect involved in the suffrage movement. When several members of the sect's female volunteers are murdered, Mary starts to investigate, but events spiral out of control, and Mary's search plunges her into the worst danger she has yet faced...
In The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Laurie R. King told a richly entertaining tale starring Mary Russell, a spirited American girl who becomes an apprentice to the famous English detective Sherlock Holmes. Now in this eagerly awaited sequel, Mary
returns to solve—with the aid of Holmes, of course—a case of murder, mystery, and religion.
The case begins when a classmate from Oxford University introduces Mary to Margery Childe, the charismatic spiritual leader of the New Temple of God.
Curious about Margery’s popular teachings, Mary begins attending temple meetings. But when Margery’s followers—all well-bred, well-heeled young women—become targets for murder, Mary senses something sinister lurking
within the walls of the temple. With Holmes at her side, she plunges headlong into the most dangerous investigation of her life.
Steeped in charming intelligence and finely crafted suspense, A Monstrous Regiment of Women continues the enchanting adventures of the most beguiling and ingenious detective team in the world of mystery fiction.
Winner of the Nero Wolfe Award
It is 1921 and Mary Russell--Sherlock Holmes's brilliant apprentice, now an Oxford graduate with a degree in theology--is on the verge of acquiring a sizable inheritance. Independent at last, with a passion for divinity and detective work, her most baffling mystery may now involve Holmes and the burgeoning of a deeper affection between herself and the retired detective. Russell's attentions turn to the New Temple of God and its leader, Margery Childe, a charismatic suffragette and a mystic, whose draw on the young theology scholar is irresistible. But when four bluestockings from the Temple turn up dead shortly after changing their wills, could sins of a capital nature be afoot? Holmes and Russell investigate, as their partnership takes a surprising turn.
The Gardener Estate is one of the most storied and beloved sites on the West Coast. Its owners thought their secrets were buried forever—but when cold-case investigator Raquel Laing arrives, secrets are all she sees.
A magnificent house, vast formal gardens, a golden family that shaped California, and a colorful past filled with now-famous artists: The Gardener Estate was a twentieth-century Eden.
And now, just as the Estate is preparing to move into a new era, restoration work on some of its art digs up a grim relic of the past: a human skull, hidden away for decades.
Inspector Raquel Laing has her work cut out for her. Fifty years ago, the Estate’s young heir, Rob Gardener, turned his palatial home into a counterculture commune of peace, love, and equality. But that was also a time when serial killers preyed on innocents—monsters like
The Highwayman, whose case has just surged back into the public eye.
Could the skull belong to one of his victims?
To Raquel—a woman who knows all about colorful pasts—the bones clearly seem linked to The Highwayman. But as she dives into the Estate’s archives to look for signs of his presence, what she unearths begins to take on a dark reality all its own.
Everything she finds keeps bringing her back to Rob Gardener himself. While he might be a gray-haired recluse now, back then he was a troubled young Vietnam vet whose girlfriend had vanished after a midsummer festival at the Estate.
But a lot of people seem to have disappeared from the Gardener Estate the summer when the commune mysteriously fell apart: a young woman, her child, and Rob’s brother, Fort.
The pressure is on, and Raquel needs to solve this case—before The Highwayman slips away, or another Gardener vanishes.
Best-selling, award-winning author Laurie R. King's tales featuring Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell are among the most popular mysteries being published. Here, King explores the great detective's initial meeting with Russell. Holmes is in a decidedly dark temper as he searches the countryside for wild bees, until he meets the headstrong young woman who will become his apprentice and eventual bride.
