The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Sherlock Holmes has retired to the country to work on his magnum opus of detection and keep bees. But as he is following bees through the hills one day, he runs across the brilliant, damaged, somewhat prickly Mary Russell. When she deduces what he is doing, and shocks him by solving his current bee tracking mystery for him, a complicated and intellectually stimulating relationship is born. Mary becomes Holmes' apprentice and friend, and of course Scotland Yard eventually calls Holmes out of retirement on a desperately important case.
The only thing better than finding this book was discovering that it's a whole series. Laurie R. King weaves smart mysteries that are worthy successors to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classics. I think the character of Holmes is pitch perfect- that King does a convincing job of peeking in on Holmes the man without revealing too much, distorting his character, or dissolving into sappiness. Of course, giving Holmes a female apprentice lends the series a distinctly feminist flavor in the sense that King quite clearly believes that women can be just as observant, intelligent, and scholarly as men, but I never felt like Mary Russell as a character stomps Holmes or men in general. I couldn't put it down, especially once the plot thickens and Russell and Holmes set off solving mysteries together.

Trouble

"If you build your house far away from trouble, then trouble will never find you" is the mantra of Henry's upper-class father and current custodian of the rock steady, 300-year-old family house by the New England sea. But everything changes for the comfortable, tidy, rooted Smiths when their oldest son Franklin is struck and gravely injured by a car. The fact that the car was driven by a teenage Cambodian refugee (who, by the way, had been bullied by Franklin and his friends) adds a few more layers to the Trouble. Racial tensions in the town ignite, and when Franklin succumbs to his injuries, Henry decides he needs to hitch-hike to and climb Mount Katahdin as he was planning to do with his brother. Only, the only driver who will pick him (and his friend, and his dog that he rescued from the sea) up is Chay, the guy whose truck hit Franklin.
Man this book is good. It's written for young adults, but completely transcendent of its genre and reading level. The plot twists around in beautiful and unexpected ways- layers on layers, and everything interconnects. Gary Schmidt tackles real issues here- death, racism, the moral ambiguity of lying to protect the person you love, the impossibility of dodging grief in life, the tragedies that happen when you try. I mean with all those issues, the book should feel like dragging your feet through wet concrete. And at times it's pretty emotionally hefty, but there is also a lot of Grace (first bounding into the story in the form of Black Dog, the bedraggled, irrepressibly friendly animal Henry saves from the sea. There are light-hearted moments all through. There's some real friendship recognized and created.
I love what Gary Schmidt finally pulls out of all this: forgiveness is freeing. Grace is the way to live well with Trouble, because you sure can't hide from it.