I’m still reading Laurie R. King’s Language of Bees, a gripping Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes story that should be available in stores Tuesday. King is scheduled to make an appearance 3 p.m. May 9 at The Poisoned Pen, 4014 N Goldwater Blvd., Suite 101, Scottsdale.
However, The Language of Bees briefly lost its grip on me when I heard about Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book. This children’s fantasy novel won the 2009 Newbery Medal from the American Library Association, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s the story of a very young boy, orphaned by his family’s murder, who wanders into a cemetery and is adopted by its spectral inhabitants. The prose is haunting, as are the illustrations by Dave McKean.
