Thrilling crime-solving exploits of Holmes and Dr. Watson in a collection of adventure classics: "The Red-Headed League," "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Final Problem," and 5 others.
Curated new collections. The fascination with Conan Doyle’s enigmatic anti-hero Sherlock Holmes, and his pompous narrator Dr Watson, has barely subsided over the years. Inspiring a long line of detective stories and Whodunnits, Holmes is a constant feature on TV, and movie screens, with new audio and radio shows joining the frenzy. The Holmes tales have earned their place amongst the most influential of popular fantasy, crime and gothic stories.
THE GAME IS ON: the greatest adventures of the greatest detective of them all - Sherlock Holmes. The most famous of all fictional detectives in a selection of his most challenging cases, including the stories A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA and THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE and his most famous novel THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. 'Arthur Conan Doyle is unique in simultaneously bringing the curtain down on an era and raising one on another, ushering in a genre of writing that, while imitated and expanded, has never been surpassed.' Stephen Fry 'Why do people still read Sherlock Holmes in an age of DNA testing and electron microscopes? It's elementary. Holmes has a timeless intelligence that puts him head, shoulders and deer-stalker above all other detectives.' Alexander McCall Smith 'Now, as in his lifetime, cab drivers, statesmen, academics, and raggedy-arsed children sit spellbound at his feet... No wonder, then, if the pairing of Holmes and Watson has triggered more imitators than any other duo in literature.' John Le Carre
Famed Victorian-era sleuth outwits a variety of unprincipled villains in "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Red-headed League," "The Final Problem," "The Adventure of the Empty House," and two other tales.
When this competition was first mooted I went into it in a most light-hearted way, thinking that it would be the easiest thing in the world to pick out the twelve best of the Holmes stories. In practice I found that I had engaged myself in a serious task... In 1927, Strand magazine challenged its readers to guess which of his Sherlock Holmes stories Arthur Conan Doyle himself rated as his very best. (Mr R. T. Newman of Spring Hill, Wellingborough, won £100 for successfully guessing ten of the twelve stories correctly.) Doyle revealed his choice and, in his own inimitable way, explained his reasoning in an article for the magazine. The stories included 'The Speckled Band', 'The Final Problem' and 'The Dancing Men'. Arthur Conan Doyle's favourite twelve Sherlock Holmes stories are now published together for the first time, with his original Strand article to introduce his own selection.
'He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson ... He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them' Sherlock Holmes, scourge of criminals everywhere, whether they be lurking in London's foggy backstreets or plotting behind the walls of an idyllic country mansion, and his faithful colleague Dr Watson, solve these breathtaking and perplexing mysteries. In Arthur Conan Doyle's The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases we encounter some of his most famous and devilishly difficult problems. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.