Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart.

South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily's harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

Praise for The Secret Life of Bees:

‘Charming, funny, moving’
The Times

‘Wonderful… by turns funny, sad, full of incident and shot through
with grown-up-magic reminiscent of Joanne Harris’
Daily Telegraph

‘Honey-sweet’
Elle

‘Superb’
Woman and Home

‘Monk Kidd has created a narrative as skilful and sweet as a honeycomb’
Literary Review

‘With imagination as lush and colourful as the American South,
a clutch of deliciously eccentric characters, and vivid prose’
Christina Schwarz

‘One of those rare literary treasures - warm, funny and original…
a brilliant and enchanting book’
Sainsbury's Magazine

‘Utterly compelling... demands to be read again and again’
Oxford Times

‘The story endures long after the book is slipped back onto the shelf’
Book magazine

‘Incredibly original and imaginative’
Glasgow Evening Times