The Great British Detective

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Margery Allingham

A proper family butler is called upon to discreetly turn away an unexpected and wholly unwelcome caller. An apparently harmless female ghost is seeking something in an old farmhouse. An unlikely gatecrasher shakes up the guests at an expensive, respectable and very dull English seaside hotel. A selection of Allingham's short stories not included in previous anthologies. Although several feature her aristocratic sleuth, Albert Campion, the rest contain surprising twists and more than a hint of the supernatural. Clever, amusing...and occasionally very unsettling.

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Michael Kurland

> In 1891, Sherlock Holmes, in a struggle with his archenemy, the Napoleon of crime, Professor James Moriarty, plunged with him over Reichenbach Falls to his inevitable death. All of England - indeed, the entire world - mourned the irreplaceable loss of the greatest detective. And that's where things stood until 1894, when Holmes suddenly reappeared in London, revealing himself to his friend Dr. John Watson, and resumed his activities as a consulting detective. Holmes remained very quiet and mysterious on those nearly three years he was missing, never revealing precisely where he'd been or what he'd done in the "hidden years." >Now, in this anthology of original stories, the truth about those thirty-five months is unveiled and Holmes's adventures described. While some of these stories place Holmes in such familiar locations as New York and San Francisco, others find him high in the Himalayas or above the Arctic Circle. With stories from such writers as Rhys Bowen, Peter Beagle, Carolyn Wheat, Michael Collins, and many others, *Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years* is a must-have book for every fan who has ever wondered about the untold adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

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Doroti Li Seiers

The fiancé of Lord Peter's sister, Mary, is found dead outside the conservatory of the Wimsey family's shooting lodge in Yorkshire. The evidence points to their older brother, Gerald, the Duke of Denver, who is charged with the murder and put on trial in the House of Lords. To clear the family name, Lord Peter and his close friend Inspector Charles Parker scour the lodge's grounds, finding several tantalizing clues, including mysterious footprints, a piece of jewelry, and a cat charm. What do these leads mean, and why are Mary and Gerald suddenly acting so mysterious? Unraveling a string of coincidences, Lord Peter is determined to solve this intriguing case. But will the answer save his brother . . . or condemn him?

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Sir ArthurConan Doyle

Even Sherlock Holmes, well-accustomed to the bizarre, finds the elements of this case unusual; the scene of the crime, a moated English country house; the wapon, a very American sawed-off shotgun; the bereaved, strangely dry-eyed; and the solution, backward in time and deep in a VALLEY OF FEAR...