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“Before Sherlock Holmes meets John Watson, the young detective solves crimes with a bright lady friend in this delectable ‘before Watson’ novel. In Croyle’s (The Caretaker, 2009) new series, Holmes is a loner college student at Oxford in 1874 when he’s bitten by a dog visiting the campus with its owner, Priscilla ‘Poppy’ Stamford…” Read the full review here. Pre publication copies are available from The Strand Magazine.

"This is an anthology of tales involving Holmes with conventional Nineteenth Century supernatural occurrences.   The ‘Holmes Agency’ has always stood firmly behind the motto, “Ghosts need not apply,” but any number of questionable events pop up in this collection. The lead story, a novella called “The Skull of Kohada Koheiji,” presents Holmes and Watson with ghostly happenings at a Japanese exhibition village in Knightsbridge.  The appearance of a Japanese specter in the midst of London does not promote amicable relations between the Japanese Empire and that of Great Britain. In the next novella, “The Ratcliffe Oracle,” an oracle has...

“Diane Gilbert Madsen has given readers another winner in the DD McGill Literati Mystery Series. The Conan Doyle Notes: The Secret of Jack the Ripper is a marvelous tale of DD McGill who is an investigator for insurance fraud and her bookseller friend, Tom Joyce, who is asked to assess the value of the literary estate of a wealthy Chicago estate owner. McGill immediately alienates herself from those associated with the estate and Tom experiences a nasty fall down a flight of stairs. Even though the police believe the fall to be an accident, McGill is convinced it was an...

The Best and Wisest Man - Being A Reprint of the Reminiscences of Mrs. Mary Watson, née Morstan 1888: Dr. John H. Watson, Army Corps surgeon turned colleague of the celebrated consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, decides not to assist in future cases as he is engaged to Mary Morstan. 1926: Mary Forrester discovers her mother’s diary, covering the years 1889 to 1893 — her marriage to Watson. What occurred in those years? How was the quintessential male friendship of Holmes and Watson seen through a woman’s eyes? How stable was a marriage where Watson was liable to abandon Mary at...