ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1859-1930)
Although best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle's work includes science fiction, historical romance and books on warfare and spiritualism. Born in Edinburgh, he qualified as a doctor and practised in Southsea before turning to writing as a means of supplementing his income. The first Sherlock Homes novel appeared in 1887 and the fictional detective soon brought fame and fortune - though Doyle always maintained his historical romances held more worth. His personal interests were far ranging: he was a strong advocate of a tunnel between England and France, of inflatable life jackets and, in one unfortunate incident, of a (faked) photograph of fairies. But it was for a paper justifying Britain's involvement in the Boer War - where he had served as a physician - that he received his knighthood. Influenced by
Edgar Allan Poe, Doyle's work often demonstrates a similar contrasting of the rational and the imaginative.
A woman dies at night in a locked room, crying out in pain: 'It was the band! The speckled band!'. Holmes investigates.
- Length: 28 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime
Holmes helps a banker from whom some expensive gems, taken as security on a loan to an important client, have been stolen.
- Length: 27 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime
A young lady asks Holmes' advice as to whether she should accept an excellent appointment as a governess even though it comes with an unusual condition attached.
- Length: 27 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime
Holmes investigates the case of a fiancee who disappeared on the day of the wedding.
- Length: 19 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime
Mystery in which a pawnbroker is offered an apparently unmissable job opportunity - only red-heads need apply.
- Length: 26 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime
When a popular local doctor is murdered, the angry brother of his ex-fiance seems the obvious suspect - until the doctor's uknown past begins to reveal itself.
- Length: 19 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime
While in the service of a widower with a dark past, a young tutor begins to wonder about his master's regular visits to a room nobody else is allowed to enter.
- Length: 14 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Fiction, Horror
An apparently impossible scenario involving the diappearance of three people from and the appearance of a totally unknown - dead - fourth on a moving train.
- Length: 17 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime
A job advert with a bizarre set of requirements leads a young entomologist off on a mysterious adventure.
- Length: 18 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime
A scientific city-man encounters the legend of a terrifying monster when he retires to Derbyshire.
- Length: 18 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
A case which leaves a Lady of notoriously loose morals in a nunnery and her lover - a brilliant physician - in a vegetative state.
- Length: 12 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime, Fiction, Horror
In this homage to Poe, two rival scholars are brought together when one discovers an important early Christian burial ground.
- Length: 15 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime, Fiction, Horror
Spending a night in the library of an old friend and scholar of the black arts, the narrator becomes curious about the object in question.
- Length: 14 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Horror
A pioneering aviator begins to suspect that the official explainations cannot account for the constant stream of in-air deaths and disappearances.
- Length: 15 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Sci-Fi
A hard-up young man receives a timely invitation to visit a mysterious, wealthy cousin at his country retreat - a bizzare menagerie of birds, reptiles and a man-eating black puma.
- Length: 21 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Crime, Fiction