Only hours after Holmes and Russell return from solving one riddle on the moor, another knocks on their front door…literally.It’s a mystery that begins during the Great War, when Gabriel Hughenfort died amidst scandalous rumors that have haunted the family ever since. But it’s not until Holmes and Russell arrive at Justice Hall, a home of unearthly perfection set in a garden modeled on Paradise, that they fully understand the irony echoed in the family motto, Justicia fortitudo mea est: “Righteousness is my strength.”A trail of ominous clues leads Holmes and Russell from an English hamlet to fashionable Paris to the wild prairie of the New World. But as the moment of reckoning approaches, will justice be done…or have they been lured straight into an elusive killer’s perfectly baited trap?

From time to time, people have asked me to comment on Sherlock Holmes, in ways other than what the novels provide. This collection of eight documents have all been published before, occasionally in slightly different versions. Some of them are straight nonfiction; others participate wholeheartedly in "The Game," that wildly imaginative edifice of Sherlockian schlorship built upon the solemn declaration that Holmes and Watson were absolutely real, that Conan Doyle was but their literary agent, and that the stories are absolutely factual—if only we lesser mortals can figure out the apparent flaws and omissions.This collection includes the following essays:Dr. Watson's War Wound, which was delivered as a guest lecture to the annual Baker Street Irregulars, where I solemnly played the game—complete with footnotes!The Sabine Baring-Gould and Sherlock Holmes essay was published in the UK journal of the Sabine Baring_Gould Appreciation Society (which turned out to be a bit rude to...

BESTSELLING AUTHORS GO HOLMES--IN AN IRRESISTIBLE NEW COLLECTION edited by award-winning Sherlockians Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger Neil Gaiman. Laura Lippman. Lee Child. These are just three of eighteen superstar authors who provide fascinating, thrilling, and utterly original perspectives on Sherlock Holmes in this one-of-a-kind book. These modern masters place the sleuth in suspenseful new situations, create characters who solve Holmesian mysteries, contemplate Holmes in his later years, fill gaps in the Sherlock Holmes Canon, and reveal their own personal obsessions with the Great Detective. Thomas Perry, for example, has Dr. Watson tell his tale, in a virtuoso work of alternate history that finds President McKinley approaching the sleuth with a disturbing request; Lee Child sends an FBI agent to investigate a crime near today's Baker Street--only to get a twenty-first-century shock; Jacqueline Winspear spins a story of a plucky boy inspired by the...

In England’s young silent-film industry, the megalomaniacal Randolph Fflytte is king. Nevertheless, at the request of Scotland Yard, Mary Russell is dispatched to investigate rumors of criminal activities that swirl around Fflytte’s popular movie studio. So Russell is traveling undercover to Portugal, along with the film crew that is gearing up to shoot a cinematic extravaganza, Pirate King . Based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, the project will either set the standard for moviemaking for a generation . . . or sink a boatload of careers. Nothing seems amiss until the enormous company starts rehearsals in Lisbon, where the thirteen blond-haired, blue-eyed actresses whom Mary is bemusedly chaperoning meet the swarm of real buccaneers Fflytte has recruited to provide authenticity. But when the crew embarks for Morocco and the actual filming, Russell feels a building storm of trouble: a derelict boat, a film crew with secrets, ominous currents between the pirates, decks awash with budding romance-and now the pirates are ignoring Fflytte and answering only to their dangerous outlaw leader. Plus, there’s a spy on board. Where can Sherlock Holmes be? As movie make-believe becomes true terror, Russell and Holmes themselves may experience a final fadeout. Pirate King is a Laurie King treasure chest-thrilling, intelligent, romantic, a swiftly unreeling masterpiece of suspense.

It’s only the second day of 1924, but Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, find themselves embroiled in intrigue. It starts with a New Year’s visit from Holmes’s brother Mycroft, who comes bearing a strange package containing the papers of an English spy named Kimball O’Hara—the same Kimball known to the world through Kipling’s famed  Kim . Inexplicably, O’Hara withdrew from the “Great Game” of espionage and now he has just as inexplicably disappeared.  When Russell discovers Holmes’s own secret friendship with the spy, she knows the die is cast: she will accompany her husband to India to search for the missing operative. But Russell soon learns that in this faraway and exotic land, it’s often impossible to tell friend from foe—and that some games aren’t played for fun but for the highest stakes of all…life and death.

Laurie R. King’s New York Times bestselling novels of suspense featuring Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, comprise one of today’s most acclaimed mystery series. Now, in their newest and most thrilling adventure, the couple is separated by a shocking circumstance in a perilous part of the world, each racing against time to prevent an explosive catastrophe that could clothe them both in shrouds.In a strange room in Morocco, Mary Russell is trying to solve a pressing mystery: Who am I? She has awakened with shadows in her mind, blood on her hands, and soldiers pounding on the door. Out in the hivelike streets, she discovers herself strangely adept in the skills of the underworld, escaping through alleys and rooftops, picking pockets and locks. She is clothed like a man, and armed only with her wits and a scrap of paper containing a mysterious Arabic phrase. Overhead, warplanes pass ominously north.Meanwhile, Holmes is pulled by two old friends and a distant relation into the growing war between France, Spain, and the Rif Revolt led by Emir Abd el-Krim—who may be a Robin Hood or a power mad tribesman. The shadows of war are drawing over the ancient city of Fez, and Holmes badly wants the wisdom and courage of his wife, whom he’s learned, to his horror, has gone missing. As Holmes searches for her, and Russell searches for herself, each tries to crack deadly parallel puzzles before it’s too late for them, for Africa, and for the peace of Europe.With the dazzling mix of period detail and contemporary pace that is her hallmark, Laurie R. King continues the stunningly suspenseful series that Lee Child called “the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.”Review'The most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today' LEE CHILD About the AuthorLaurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of twelve Mary Russell mysteries, five contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, and the acclaimed novels A Darker Place, Folly, Keeping Watch, and Touchstone. She lives in Northern California.

Laurie R. King, creator of San Francisco homicide detective Kate Martinelli, has been praised byThe New York Times Book Reviewfor her "taut pacing...air of menace...superb characters." Now the author of A Grave Talent (winner of the top mystery awards on both sides of the Atlantic), To Play the Fool , and With Child continues the series with a crime novel as disturbing as it is riveting. After her last harrowing case Kate is more than ready for routine police work and a newfound serenity with her longtime lover, Lee, and their circle of close friends. Until one night when her pager summons her to a scene of carefully executed murder. Half-hidden in a clump of bushes lies a well-muscled corpse, handcuffed and strangled, a stun gun's faint burn on his chest and candy in his pocket. The only person who might have wanted airport baggage handler James Larsen dead, it seems, is the wife he repeatedly abused--who recently left him for a women's shelter. But her alibi is airtight, her physique frail, and her attitude less than vengeful. Kate and her partner, Al Hawkin, are stumped. Then a second body turns up--also zapped, cuffed, strangled...and carrying a chocolate bar. It is that of Matthew Banderas, a software salesman convicted of one rape, suspected of many more. Yet, despite the newspaper headlines, Kate and Al can establish no personal link between the victims and cannot rule out coincidence. But in the midst of an unpromising investigation, Kate has another cause thrust upon her by her friend, feminist minister Roz Hall. Investigators have already called it an accident, but Roz is convinced the young Indian bride was actually murdered--and when Roz takes up a crusade, no one can deny her. As Kate wrestles with the clash between her personal and professional lives, a third killing draws her and Al into a network of pitiless destruction that reaches far beyond San Francisco, a contemporary-style hit list with shudderingly primal roots. Winner of the Best First Crime Novel Award from both the Mystery Writers of America and the British Crime Writers' Association for the first book in the Kate Martinelli series,A Grave Talent, Laurie R. King has created a body of work that transcends genre classification and has fully broken out into the mainstream, novels which have the intensity and depth of superb literary work, spiced with harrowing suspense. Winner of the Best First Crime Novel Award from both the Mystery Writers of America and the British Crime Writers Association for the first book in the Kate Martinelli series, A Grave Talent, Laurie R. King creates novels that have the intensity and depth of superb literary work, spiced with harrowing suspense.

In a stunning follow-up to the acclaimed In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger present a brand-new anthology of stories inspired by the Arthur Conan Doyle canon.In this follow-up to the acclaimed In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, expert Sherlockians Laurie King and Les Klinger put forth the question: What happens when great writers/creators who are not known as Sherlock Holmes devotees admit to being inspired by Conan Doyle stories? While some are highly-regarded mystery writers, others are best known for their work in the fields of fantasy or science fiction. All of these talented authors, however, share a great admiration for Arthur Conan Doyle and his greatest creations, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.To the editors' great delight, these stories go in many directions: Some tell of Holmes himself: in Victorian Baker Street or modern New York, in various guises or a different gender. Some writers choose to explore other Conan...

Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes are back in Laurie R. King’s highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling mystery series. And this time the first couple of detection pair up to unlock the buried memory of a shocking crime with the power to kill again–lost somewhere in Russell’s own past. After departing Bombay by ship, Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes are en route to the bustling modern city of San Francisco. There, Mary will settle some legal affairs surrounding the inheritance of her family’s old estate. But the closer they get to port, the more Mary finds herself prey to troubling dreams and irrational behavior–a point not lost on Holmes, much to Russell’s annoyance.In 1906, when Mary was six, San Francisco was devastated by an earthquake and a raging fire that reduced the city to rubble. For years, Mary has denied any memory of the catastrophe that for days turned the fabled streets into hell on earth. But Holmes suspects that some hidden trauma connected with the “unforgettable” catastrophe may be the real culprit responsible for Mary’s memory lapse. And no sooner do they begin to familiarize themselves with the particulars of the Russell estate than it becomes apparent that whatever unpleasantness Mary has forgotten, it hasn’t forgotten her. Why does her father’s will forbid access to the house except in the presence of immediate family? Why did someone break in, then take nothing of any value? And why is Russell herself targeted for assassination? The more questions they ask of Mary’s past, the more people from that past turn out to have died violent, unexplained deaths. Now, with the aid of a hard-boiled young detective and crime writer named Hammett, Russell and Holmes find themselves embroiled in a mystery that leads them through the winding streets of Chinatown to the unspoken secrets of a parent’s marriage and the tragic car “accident” that a fourteen-year-old Mary alone survived–an accident that may not have been an accident at all. What Russell is about to discover is that even a forgotten past never dies…and it can kill again.

Mary Russell's WarOn the day the Great War began, August 4, 1914, fourteen year-old Mary Russell opened a new diary and wrote the words:I was fourteen when I first heard about the War. Fourteen years and 214 days, with my nose (as usual) in a book as I walked down the stairs. At least, that's how Mother says I shall remember it. And Father agrees, that War will be both long and hard, for all the European countries and the Empire...A hundred years later, Laurie R. King, Miss Russell's literary agent, began to publish the account of this youthful writer in her own blog. (King is credited with having written the Russell memoirs, just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was credited for being the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories penned by Dr Watson.)Young Miss Russell's weekly entries begin in San Francisco and take her to Boston, London, and Sussex during the early months of War. They serve as a chronicle not only of the European conflict, but of her own catastrophic turmoil. Since the...

At the close of the year 1918, forced to flee England, Sherlock Holmes and his nineteen-year-old apprentice Mary Russell enter British-occupied Palestine under the auspices of Holmes’s enigmatic brother, Mycroft. Their arrival coincides with a rash of unsolved murders that has baffled the authorities and seems unrelated to the growing tensions in the area among Jew, Moslem, and Christian. Still, no one is too pleased at Holmes’s insistence on reconstructing the most recent homicide in the desert gully where it occurred. What they unexpectedly uncover will lead Russell and Holmes through an exotic gauntlet of labyrinthine bazaars, verminous hovels, cliff-hung monasteries—and into mortal danger. In the jewel-like city of Jerusalem, they will at last meet their adversary, whose lust for power could reduce the city’s most ancient and sacred place to rubble and ignite a tinderbox of hostilities just waiting for a spark.