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Book Review - Cruel September

Posted by Steve Emecz on

Book Review - Cruel September

The Historical Novel Society Cruel September is set in the scholastic world of Los Angeles at the time of the Vietnamese War and the teachers’ strike of 1970. It concerns the experience of Mandy Sayer, a newly qualified teacher, her relationship with Art Malamud, the union rep at the school in which she takes her first job – and the destructive power of Vivian Laws, the school’s principal. As the academic year progresses and the internal politics of the school emerge, we meet other members of the staff whose stories embellish the situation in which Mandy and Art find themselves. As...

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Arthur Conan Doyle, The Langham and Sherlock Holmes

Posted by Steve Emecz on

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Langham and Sherlock Holmes

One of the great pleasures of being a publisher is meeting up with our authors and one of the most important for Sherlock Holmes is Alistair Duncan. His book 'Eliminate The Impossible' was the very first Holmes related book that started us on a journey that, nearly two decades later, see us with over five hundred Sherlock Holmes titles. This particular meet up this Saturday was a pretty special one. We met for a meal at The Langham, which is one of the key hotels in history of Sherlock Holmes. We're pictured underneath the plaque that commemorates an important meeting...

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Top 20 Sherlock Holmes Audiobooks in June 2024

Posted by Steve Emecz on

Top 20 Sherlock Holmes Audiobooks in June 2024

By far our largest Sherlock Holmes audiobook month ever this June - helped along by the top selling book Sherlock Holmes Investigates by Susan Knight being featured in the June Audible sale. It kept The Further Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes off the top spot but it may well be heading back there if early July sales are anything to go by. Short story collections once again dominated filling all top five slots. We expect Denis Smiths new collection The Six-Thirteen from Fairfield Junction and Other Cases of Sherlock Holmes  launched in June to climb up the charts fast too.   1.   Sherlock Holmes Investigates –...

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Sherlock Book Review - The Six Thirteen From Fairfield Junction and Other Cases of Sherlock Holmes

Posted by Steve Emecz on

Sherlock Book Review - The Six Thirteen From Fairfield Junction and Other Cases of Sherlock Holmes

Tom Turley Sherlockian pasticheurs (myself included) often forget that Conan Doyle’s primary purpose in the Canon was to exhibit his detective’s skills in observation and deduction. Assuredly, Denis O. Smith is not among them. Each of the five cases in his new collection is a flawlessly constructed chain of logical analysis, in which (as Watson put it elsewhere) every link rings true.  There is commendable variety among them: two are obviously inspired by canonical stories; another is an “untold tale.” A whimsical offering about a stolen artifact gives way to grimmer sagas of international conspiracy, thwarted love, and murder. Smith...

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The Doctor and the Demon

Posted by Steve Emecz on

The Doctor and the Demon

One of the stories in the current Kickstarter campaign for The Redacted Sherlock Holmes Volume VIII. The Doctor and the Demon Holmes and Watson met soon after the Battle of Maiwand in 1880 with Watson still tanned from his time in the tropics yet their first canonical work that is explicitly dated is in 1887. What happened in this period – much longer than the Great Hiatus when there were apparently no cases? This work of 1882 featuring the best-known sportsmen in the world of the time reveals all for the first time and Holmes shows his extraordinary ability to...

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