Showing results by narrator "Michael Langan" in All Categories

What's behind a series of mysterious deaths among the favourite concubines of Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II? Suspecting a plot against himself, the Sultan has called on Sherlock Holmes to investigate. However, as a man, the detective is clearly unable to penetrate the exotic enclosed world of the harem, so he reluctantly enlists the help of his landlady, Mrs Hudson. Together with Dr Watson, they travel across Europe by Orient Express to Constantinople, on the way encountering Holmes's old enemy, Baron Mauterpuis.

Sherlock Holmes is a Yorkshireman, born and brought up on the North York Moors, but he spent much of his life at 221B Baker Street in London. He is more than a character from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's imagination. For many thousands of followers, he still lives in their minds through films, television, stage and radio plays, and written stories. Ever since Holmes first appeared in print, people have used the stories, together with knowledge of the culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to speculate about his life. They wanted more than the 60 stories in the Canon.

Séamas Duffy’s fourth novel, Sherlock Holmes and the Sixty Steps, follows a similar format to his previously published Holmes collections: a novella together with some shorter stories. The four stories are: “The Tragedy of Langhorne Wyke” (1890); “The Mystery of the Thirteen Bells” (1895); “The Adventure of the Sixty Steps” (1897); and “The Problem of the Coptic Patriarchs” (1898).

More tales from the dispatch box of Doctor John Watson. These 10 stories have appeared previously in various volumes of The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories and other anthologies. They come together as a collection for the first time.

Many of the adventures of my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes the consulting detective, in which I was privileged to assist him, I have recorded elsewhere. There were however, a number of instances when, sometimes for reasons of his own which I could not fathom, he expressly forbade me to forward others for publication.

If a Djinn granted you three wishes, what would you ask for? Riches? Immortality? World peace? More wishes? Really? Wrong. You’d overthink it, try to be clever – and end up legally bound to turn into a goat. Djinn are ancient, cunning, and terrifyingly literal. That’s why we invented Djinn Law: an entire legal field built to navigate wish contracts and keep the world (mostly) intact. Enter Elias Trenholm, a junior solicitor stuck at the bottom of the hierarchy at Albright & Rune, a firm specialising in Djinn contract law.

Holmes and Watson are on the trail of seemingly unrelated deaths preceded by sudden unexplained madness as they work to solve the case of the abominable worm. Are the deaths murders? And if so, what is the motive and who is responsible? Can Holmes and Watson solve the mystery of the abominable worm before her Majesty's navy experiences an unprecedented two-fold loss. Rebecca St. John has established herself as a force to be reckoned with in London's mysterious spiritual world and the hidden world of London's private clubs. But she wants more.

Another eight eclectic tales from the pen of Stephen Herczeg. All have featured in annals of the MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes stories and the many anthologies from Belanger Books. The body was in the box, and then it wasn't. Holmes must find the dead girl and the identity of her killer. A young girl appears to be possessed by a demon. What is the truth and who is behind it? Dead bees. Honey that tastes of ash. A retired Holmes must track down the cause and unearth the mystery behind the strange colour creeping across the countryside.

In 2000, archaeologist Paul Gething rediscovered a sword. An unprepossessing length of rusty metal, it had been left in a suitcase for thirty years. But Paul had a suspicion that the sword had more to tell than appeared, so he sent it for specialist tests. When the results came back, he realized that what he had in his possession was possibly the finest, and certainly the most complex, sword ever made, which had been forged in seventh-century Northumberland by an anonymous swordsmith.

Many books have been written on the Jesus People movement in the United States, but what about its impact in the United Kingdom? When Jesus Met Hippies explores how this counter-cultural movement of Christians found its own expression in the United Kingdom, reshaping the lives of individuals along with the life and mission of the new and existing churches across the nation.

Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like "pandemic," a Freudian state of mind like the "Oedipus complex," or a replica of the Parthenon in a Chinese theme park, ancient Greek culture shapes the contours of our lives. Ever since the first Roman imitators, we have been continually falling under the Greeks' spell. But how did ancient Greece spread its influence so far and wide? And how has this influence changed us?

This is the 37th story from the Art of Sherlock Holmes project and first appeared in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part VI.

For centuries, industrialization and factory-based production have been core ingredients in economic growth, development, and innovation. This symbiotic relationship between industrialization and economic prosperity is now changing.

On the eve of Newgate Prison's demolition, Watson spies Holmes leaving a public sale of the prison's miscellany in the company of a beautiful stranger, and in possession of an unusual trophy–the death mask of a woman who, more than 20 years earlier, had been executed for the murder of her three children. Holmes agrees to satisfy Watson's curiosity about the memento by recounting the decades-old history of its subject.

Diplomat, conspirator, intelligence gatherer, propagandist, and charmer, Rogue Agent tells the colorful story of London’s key agent in Moscow during the first half of the twentieth century, Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart. Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart (1887-1970) was an impressive figure who played a vital role in both world wars. He was a man who charmed his way into the confidences of everyone from Leon Trotsky to Anthony Eden. A man whom the influential press baron Lord Beaverbrook claimed, "could well have been prime minister.”

It is no secret that the kids who study the hardest have the biggest chance of winning. I entered my first spelling bee when I was nine years old without studying a single word, and it is safe to say I didn’t make it very far. I spent the whole of the next summer studying, and that year, I came in first place in the county. Are you ready to be a champion, too?

In 1941, Lenin's body was moved from his tomb on Red Square and taken to Siberia. By 1945, a victorious Stalin had turned a poor country into a victorious superpower. Over the course of those four years, Stalin, at Churchill's insistence, accepted an Anglo-American press corps in Moscow to cover the Eastern Front. Stalin imposed the most draconian controls-unbending censorship, no visits to the battlefront, and a ban on contact with ordinary citizens.

In an untouched corner of Craynebrook, the lifeless body of a local farmer is found, his blood mingling with the mud of Blackbird Farm. For Detective Inspector Matthew Stannard, still nursing wounds from a brutal assault, this grisly scene marks the beginning of an investigation unlike any he’s worked on before.

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December 1930. After a year of bloodshed and scandal, the police officers of Craynebrook are hoping for a quiet Christmas. But when the bodies of an elderly couple are discovered in their home on Christmas morning, they realise there will be no peace this holiday season.