Sherlock Holmes and The Masquerade Murders (1994)

Another fine Holmes pastiche by Frank Thomas, this one with terrific cover art featuring the classic pairing of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. First published as a paperback in 1986, this hardcover edition was released in 1994.

In a sea of blackness . . .

A bank appraiser, expert at identifying counterfeit papers, is discovered quite dead in London's financial district––but is it from natural causes or a cleverly disguised murder? Sherlock Holmes, ever the brilliant theorist, conducts his own brand of post-mortem as he leads Dr. Watson and a motley crew of confidence men on a precarious chase through the most notorious neighborhoods of London.

One primrose path leads to another––from the mystifying futures market to the most sensational costume ball in many a season. Lives, fortunes and careers are the stakes in this deadly game . . . ad it's up to the master sleuth and the good doctor to unmask the cunning culprits before another corpse is found.

Frank Thomas has adapted this adventure from the memories of the esteemed John H. Watson, M.D. The case has been selected precisely because it was the cause celebrate in its day, although a true account of this sensational case has never before been revealed. In a hardcover edition for the first time, Sherlock Holmes and the Masquerade Murders is now a matter of public record, confirming again the stature of the world's greatest consulting detective.

Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Masquerade Murders
Author: Frank Thomas
Year: 1986
Publisher: The Armchair Detective Library
Purchase: Amazon

The Infernal Device (1979)

Another novel that puts Professor Moriarty front and center. Michael Kurland also penned sequels: Death By Gaslight, The Empress of India, The Great Game and Who Thinks Evil. Great cover art on this first paperback edition from 1979.

SCOTLAND YARD WAS HELPLESS.
SHERLOCK HOLMES WAS HOPELESS.
AND JUST ONE MAN COULD SAVE THE QUEEN,
THE EMPIRE, THE WORLD.

Who was the single figure who alone could foil the most cunning plot ever to threaten civilization with unspeakable horror?

None other than that archenemy of the law...that mastermind who obsessed Sherlock Holmes to the point of madness...that extraordinary hero whose true natures is revealed on these thrilling pages for the first time–

Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime, and now the world's last hope to circumvent the villainy of a loathsome Russian for.

Title: The Infernal Device
Author: Michael Kurland
Year: 1979 (first released 1978)
Publisher: Signet
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Sherlock Holmes and The Three Winter Terrors (2022)

Another seasonal Holmes pastiche from author James Lovegrove.

A beautifully presented sinister seasonal mystery from the acclaimed author of Sherlock Holmes & The Christmas Demon.

1889. The First Terror. At a boys’ prep school in the Kent marshes, a pupil is found drowned in a pond. Could this be the fulfilment of a witch’s curse from over two hundred years earlier?

1890. The Second Terror. A wealthy man dies of a heart attack at his London townhouse. Was he really frightened to death by ghosts?

1894. The Third Terror. A body is discovered in the dark woods near a Surrey country manor, hideously ravaged. Is the culprit a cannibal, as the evidence suggests?

These three chilling and strangely linked crimes test Sherlock Holmes’s deductive powers, and his scepticism about the supernatural, to the limit.

Title: Sherlock Holmes and The Three Winter Terrors
Author: James Lovegrove
Year: 2022
Publisher: Titan Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXXV: However Improbable (1889-1896)

MX releases the second of two volumes to close out 2022.

Part XXXV: Margaret Walsh, M.J. Elliott, Paul Gilbert, David Marcum, Dan Rowley and Don Baxter, Sean M. Wright and DeForeest B. Wright, III, Jane Rubino, Arthur Hall, Tracy J. Revels, Alan Dimes, Geri Schear, Susan Knight, The Davies Brothers, Josh Cerefice, Mark Mower, Robert Stapleton, Charles Veley and Anna Elliott, Naching T. Kassa, Martin Daley, Kevin Thornton, and I.A. Watson, with a poem by Christopher James, and forewords by Nicholas Rowe, Roger Johnson, Emma West, Steve Emecz, and David Marcum

Title: The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXXV: However Improbable (1889-1896)
Year: 2022
Publisher: MX Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXXIV: However Improbable (1878-1888)

MX releases the first of two new volumes to close out 2022.

Part XXXIV: Featuring Contributions by: Marcia Wilson, Gordon Linzner, Will Murray, Dan Rowley, Tim Newton Anderson, Arthur Hall, Thomas A. Burns, Jr., David Marcum, James Gelter, Anisha Jagdeep, DJ Tyrer, Paul Hiscock, Leslie Charteris and Denis Green, Stephen Herczeg, Tracy J. Revels, Roger Riccard and John McNabb, with a poem by Joseph W. Svec, III, and forewords by Nicholas Rowe, Roger Johnson, Emma West, Steve Emecz, and David Marcum.

Title: The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXXIV: However Improbable (1878-1888)
Editor: David Marcum
Year: 2022
Publisher: MX Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Sherlock Holmes & The Twelve Thefts of Christmas (2022)

More Holmes for the holidays.

A thrilling chase as Sherlock Holmes is set a fiendish puzzle by Irene Adler over a snowy London Christmas, in this stunningly packaged mystery. 

Sherlock Holmes’s discovery of a mysterious musical score initiates a devious Christmas challenge set by Irene Adler, with clues that are all variations on the theme of ‘theft without theft', such as a statue missing from a museum found hidden in the room it was taken from. 

In the snowy London lead-up to Christmas, Holmes’s preoccupation with the "Adler Variations" risks him neglecting the case of his new client, Norwegian arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who has received a series of threats in the form of animal carcasses left on his doorstep. Could they really be gifts from a strange spirit that has pursued Nansen since the completion of his expedition to cross Greenland? And might this case somehow be related to Irene Adler’s great game?

Title: Sherlock Holmes and The Twelve Thefts of Christmas
Author: Tim Major
Year: 2022
Publisher: Titan Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man (1985)

Paperback edition of Daniel Stahower's 1985 novel that teams Sherlock Holmes with Harry Houdini. Stashower would go on to pen a series of "Harry Houdini Mysteries" in the early 2000s. Cover art below is by Neil Stuart (design) and Doug Henry (illustration). You can see the hardcover HERE.

THE WORLDS GREATEST DETECTIVE AND THE KING OF MAGIC TEAM UP TO SOLVE "THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY"

When Harry Houdini is framed and jailed for espionage and Sherlock Holmes vows to clear his name, the two join forces to confound the crooks who are out to blackmail the Prince of Wales. It's a case that requires all their special skills––and then some. As Houdini reduces his body to ectoplasm, Holmes deduces how he does it. And when Houdini makes a daring exit from Scotland Yard, Watson becomes the only person ever to actually see him escape from a prison cell. The magical entertainment, glittering with suspense, comedy, and romance, is a must for Sherlock Holmes fans of lovers of adventure and mystery in grand style.

Title: The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man

Author: Daniel Stashower

Year: 1985

Publisher: Penguin

Purchase: Amazon.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Sabina Hall (1989)

L.B. Greenwood's follow-up to her 1986 novel Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Raleigh Legacy. Beautiful cover art by Kazu Sano.

At the behest of a university acquaintance, Sherlock Holmes joins Dr. Watson on a mission of mercy to the bleak Bristol coast. But Holmes is not motivated by altruism, and when they reach Sabina Hall, his suspicions are justified. Miserly old Silas Andrews, who was to be Watson's patient, lies dead––and a peculiar smell on his medicine spoon means only one thing to Holmes: poison!

The drafty, dilapidated Hall teams with suspects: Bertha Garth, Sila's coldhearted sister-in-law, all too gleeful over her large inheritance; servants Joel and Belle Harper, who expect––and do not receive––a legacy; cheeky housemaid Sally Kipp, mysteriously far from her Cockney homes; nasty village handyman Neb, bitter over conditions at Silas's now-derelict coal mine; and Aunt Garth's put-upon companion, Agnes, whose sweetness leaves Watson, at least, sure of her innocence...

Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Sabina Hall
Author: L.B. Greenwood
Year: 1989 (first published 1988)
Publisher: Pocket Books
Purchase: Amazon (U.S.) | Amazon (UK)

Revenge from the Grave (2022)

A new Holmes pastiche by noted Sherlockian David Stuart Davies. You can hear an excellent interview with Davis about his days working with Jeremy Brett at the terrific The Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast.

 

A brand-new Sherlock Holmes mystery from acclaimed Sherlockian author David Stuart Davies, featuring the return of the sinister Moriarty gang... 

When Professor James Moriarty plunged over the Reichenbach Falls the world believed that Sherlock Holmes was also dead. Three years later, Holmes has returned – but so, too, has a deadly threat. With Moriarty’s criminal empire still very much alive, Holmes and Watson are forced to ask themselves if their greatest foe really did perish…

Title: Revenge from the Grave
Author: David Stuart Davies
Year: 2022
Publisher: Titan Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk