The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXXVII: 2023 Annual (1875-1889)

The MX series continues with the first of three 2023 Annuals. 

Part XXXVII: Will Murray, Brenda Seabrooke, Arthur Hall, Steven Philip Jones, Dan Rowley and Don Baxter, David Marcum, Hugh Ashton, Sonya Kudei, Barry Clay, DJ Tyrer, Mark Wardecker, Paul Hiscock, Tom Turley, Brett Fawcett, Martin Daley, Bob Byrne, Tracy J. Revels, James Gelter, and Matthew White, with a poem by Kevin Patrick McCann, and forewords by Michael Sims, Roger Johnson, Emma West, Steve Emecz, and David Marcum.

Title: The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXXVII: 2023 Annual (1875-1889)
Year: 2023
Publisher: MX Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Holmes Coming (2022)

In the tradition of They Might Be Giants and A Three-Pipe Problem, here's another take on Holmes appearing in modern times. Although in this case it sounds like this is the real Sherlock?

The genius reappears, but is the twenty-first century ready for him?

Dr. Amy Winslow tells the story: in foggy, nighttime San Francisco a jogging SFPD captain is savagely attacked by a Bengal tiger which then vanishes. In her ER, Amy labors unsuccessfully to save the captain’s life, then consoles his aggrieved closest friend, Lt. Luis Ortega. Neither suspects their lives will intertwine in a life-or-death mystery.

The next day, checking on former patient Mrs. Hudson at her Victorian house isolated in Marin County’s forest, Amy discovers in the cellar a secret, cobweb-covered 1899 electrochemical laboratory containing a Jules Verne-esque steam-punk sarcophagus out of which springs a wild-eyed, half-mummified, crypt-keeper-like man who injects himself with something before falling dead at her feet. Amy barely revives him.

He claims to be a real-life Victorian master chemist and detective named Holmes, who allowed Conan Doyle to write stories based on his cases, though was slightly annoyed when Doyle changed his real first name to the catchier Sherlock. Becoming uninspired by 1890s crime, Holmes devised this method to hibernate for a century to investigate future mysteries.

Amy assumes he’s a lunatic. His Scotland Yard identity papers were stolen while he slept, so it takes her a while to realize his amazing story is true.

Respectably handsome when cleaned up, Holmes is still the same brash, egoistic, uber-English, cocaine-addicted, non-feminist genius -- but now a century out of sync -- so his still-brilliant deductions are sometimes laughingly or dangerously wrong. Holmes and Amy, his reluctant new Watson, find themselves unexpectedly attracted to each other while perilously involved in reclaiming his proof of identity, aided by cybersavvy street teen Zapper. It’s all connected to the horrific death-by-tiger, only the first of several bizarre, mystifying murders being committed by an exquisitely fiendish descendant of Holmes’ Victorian archenemy, Professor Moriarty.

The tone is classic Holmes -- plus a refreshing twist of fish-out-of-water humor with a surprising spark of real romance.

Title: Holmes Coming
Author: Kenneth Johnson
Year: 2022
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXXVI: However Improbable (1897-1919)

I seem to have missed this final MX release of 2022. These are getting hard to keep track of!

Part XXXVI: Tracy J. Revels, David L. Leal, Josh Cerefice, John Farrell, Amanda Knight, Arthur Hall, William Todd, Liese Sherwood-Fabre, Margaret Walsh, Hal Glatzer, Leslie Charteris and Denis Green, Craig Janacek, David Marcum, Tim Symonds, Dan Rowley, and Chris Chan, with a poem by Alisha Shea, and forewords by Nicholas Rowe, Roger Johnson, Emma West, Steve Emecz, and David Marcum

Title: The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXXVI: However Improbable (1897-1919) 
Year: 2022
Publisher: MX Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

One Must Tell The Bees (2021)

The curious case of Sherlock Holmes and Abraham Lincoln by J. Lawrence Matthews.

 

"PRESIDENT LINCOLN IS ASSASSINATED IN HIS PRIVATE BOX AT FORD'S!" 

When those harrowing words ring out during a children's entertainment in Washington on the evening of April 14, 1865, a quick-thinking young chemist from England named Holmes grabs the 12-year-old son of the dying President, races the boy to safety, and soon finds himself enlisted in the most infamous manhunt in history. 

ONE MUST TELL THE BEES is the untold story of Sherlock Holmes's journey from the streets of London to the White House of Abraham Lincoln and, in company with a freed slave named after the dead President, the breathtaking pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. It is the very first case of the man who would become known to the world as Sherlock Holmes, and as readers will discover, it will haunt him until his very last.

At a time when Western history is being reexamined and retold--and even the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, "the Great Emancipator," is questioned--ONE MUST TELL THE BEES is a timely reminder that our history deserves to be well understood before it is entirely undone.

Title: One Must Tell The Bees
Author: J. Lawrence Matthews
Year: 2021
Publisher: Not Making This Up LLC
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Greyhound of the Baskervilles (2019)

A unique take on The Hound of Baskervilles from author John Gaspard.

A new take on the Arthur Conan Doyle's classic mystery, "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

Think you know this story? Well, you haven't experienced it until you've read it through the eyes of Sherlock's pet dog.

It's the classic tale, now narrated by a dog. A greyhound, in fact, named Septimus.

Holmes and Watson ... and Septimus ... are called to the Baskerville estate to protect the new Baron and see if there is any truth to the legend of the hound of the Baskervilles. It's a dog-meet-dog mystery as Septimus sniffs out the clues, detects the red herrings and goes head-to-head with the monsterous creature which is haunting the moors.

It's the classic you love ... but now it's a slightly different tail!

Title: The Greyhound of the Baskervilles
Author: John Gaspard
Year: 2019
Publisher: John Gaspard
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The West End Horror (1977)

First released in hardcover in 1976, this is the mass market paperback edition of Nicholas Meyer's second Holmes novel, The West End Horror. The cover has a cut out window that opens up to a full illustration showing the book's major players (below).

THE GAME'S AFOOT AND HOLMES IS GIVING CHASE!

March 1895. Menace stalks the renowned West End. A maniac more terrifying than Jack the Ripper is on a rampage through London's glamorous theater district.

What baffles Scotland Yard is elementary to the great detective–until Holmes finds himself in the clutches of the grisly murderer!

With the ever faithful Dr. Watson by his side, Baker Street's legendary sleuth sets out to snare the  elusive killer with the help or hinderance of  struggling writer George Bernard Shaw, Gilbert and Sullivan, a controversial wit named Oscar Wilde and London's novelist woman, actress Ellen Terry.

Title: The West End Horror
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 1977
Publisher: Ballantine
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

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