Join us this week in wishing a happy birthday to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born on May 22nd 1859. Famed as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Scottish born Arthur was a remarkable man in his own right, a physician as well as a writer, a keen sportsman, political campaigner, seeker of justice and in later years, a disciple of spiritualism - all of which kept him, and his much loved detective Sherlock Holmes, firmly embedded in the public eye. In fact, so popular were the Sherlock Holmes stories, that when Conan Doyle tired of Holmes and attempted to kill him off by having him fall to his death in a struggle with arch-nemesis Moriarty, there was such a public outcry that he was obliged to bring him back to life again.
We've kicked off our reading selection with a pick of the best Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as the very first 'A Study In Scarlet' which earned the young Conan Doyle £25.00. We've also included Julian Barnes's remarkable story 'Arthur and George', which re-imagines Conan Doyle's participation in the real life George Edjali case, which came to light in 1906, and saw Doyle making a significant intervention against a serious miscarriage of justice. So pick yourself a slew of super sleuth stories to take you right up to the midnight hour and beyond!
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| Sherlock Holmes's Greatest Cases By: Arthur Conan Doyle    | Just £3.75 with FREE delivery on most paperbacks Many of the most famous tales are here - the singular case of 'The Red-Headed League', the terrifying 'The Speckled Band' and 'A Scandal in Bohemia', which records one of the few times Holmes was outwitted - and by a woman, whom he afterwards admired as he did no one else. Those who have not read the stories for years, or have never read them, will be astonished by the grace and humour of Conan Doyle's writing, the cleverness of his enigmas and the affectionate characterization of the outwardly cold, relentlessly logical Holmes and the eager admiring Watson. | The Hound of the Baskervilles By: Arthur Conan Doyle   | Just £3.75 with FREE delivery on most paperbacks Conan Doyle's novella of the fog-enshrouded moors is one of his most well known. 'Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face'. The coroner may have ruled death by natural causes but Sherlock Holmes knows there's something more sinister behind Sir Charles Baskerville's demise. The question is, could he really have fallen victim to the legendary phantom hound, the curse said to have haunted his ancestors for generations? Or is this the work of a very real and calculating murderer? |
| The Return of Sherlock Holmes By: Arthur Conan Doyle  | Just £3.75 with FREE delivery on most paperbacks Three years have passed since Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Moriarty vanished into the abyss of the Reichenbach falls. In that time the criminals of London have been able to sleep safe in their beds. But with the appearance of a dangerous individual with an air gun, the capital has never been in greater need of its protector. And so it is that Dr Watson meets a mysterious deformed man who reveals the truth behind the fateful final conflict between Holmes and Moriarty, and paves the way for the extraordinary return of the world's greatest sleuth in thirteen new tales of mystery and deduction. | Arthur and George By: Julian Barnes   | Just £3.75 with FREE delivery on most paperbacks Arthur Conan Doyle, famous as the creator of the world's greatest detective, is mourning his first wife (having been chastely in love for ten years with the woman who was to become his second) when he hears about the Edjali case. Incensed at this obvious miscarriage of justice, he is galvanised into trying to clear George's name. With a mixture of detailed research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings to life not just this long-forgotten case, but the inner lives of these two very different men. |
| Arthur Conan Doyle By: Daniel Stashower   | Just £3.75 with FREE delivery on most paperbacks Famed as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle was a fascinating man in his own right -- physician, sportsman, crusader for social justice, war correspondent and military historian. From his early whale-hunting days to his later celebrity, Conan Doyle's life was as gripping as any of his own adventure tales. Throughout, his mother Mary Foley was Conan Doyle's principal confidante, the recipient of a stream of startlingly frank letters from her devoted son. Over a thousand letters between them survive from the time Arthur was sent away to boarding school in 1867, aged eight, until her death in 1920. | A Study in Scarlet By: Arthur Conan Doyle  | Just £3.75 with FREE delivery on most paperbacks The first story to feature the character of Sherlock Holmes; the book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes to his companion Doctor Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "study in scarlet": "There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it." |
| The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes By: Arthur Conan Doyle  | Just £3.75 with FREE delivery on most paperbacks A man like Sherlock Holmes has many enemies: violent murderers, deviant villains, ghosts of old loves, blackmailers and poisonous scribes, to name but a few. But none are so deadly, so powerful, as Professor Moriarty. Moriarty - the only man who can compete with Holmes' genius. The only man who can, perhaps, ultimately defeat the great detective.Widely considered to be the first true example of a super-villain, Moriarty is a criminal mastermind, described by Holmes as the "Napoleon of Crime" – ‘He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city'. | The Hound of the Baskervilles According to Spike Milligan By: Spike Milligan   | Just £3.75 with FREE delivery on most paperbacks The classic and terrifying story of The Hound of the Baskervilles is hilariously rewritten according to Spike Milligan. Sherlock Holmes and his trusty companion, Dr Watson, are working together once more to solve the mystery at Baskerville Hall. This time, however, there's something fishy about the hound, a woman cries in the night, Guinness and Newcastle Brown are taken intravenously and the Berlin Philharmonic keep running out of things to play. 'But why keep me in the dark, Holmes?' 'It saves electricity, Watson.' |