In a momentous period of British history, Donald Thomas’ latest Sherlock Holmes adventure pits the great detective and his faithful biographer, Dr. John Watson, against an international conspiracy led by a disgraced English officer. Colonel Hunter Moran bears upon him the “Mark of the Beast”; his satanic ingenuity leaves a spectacular trail of devastation. It runs from the annihilation of a British armored column by Zulu tribesmen–armed only with shields and spears–to a life-and-death struggle on the sinking passenger steamer Comtesse de Flandre.

The heir to the French empire lies dead in the African dust. Europe is brought to the brink of war by forged dispatches, designed to enrich gun-runners and assassins. The gold fields and diamond mines of South Africa become the playground of organized crime. Only the detective genius of Holmes can prove a match for the unfolding criminality of Moran and his associates. With Watson and Mycroft at his side, Sherlock Holmes again demonstrates that although the powers of the state and the underworld may try to overpower him, they will never out-think his splendid analytical mind at the height of its powers.

“Have you ever seen a ghost, Mr. Holmes?” asks Victoria Temple, and Sherlock Holmes, at the height of his powers in 1898, must face a new challenge, one that plunges the great detective into the realm of the supernatural. Miss Temple has been found guilty–but also insane–at her trial for murdering a child under her care. She is locked away in the Broadmoor lunatic asylum, and worse still, she believes fully in her own guilt. But were the hauntings at the Elizabethan manor house of Bly a vision of the walking dead, perhaps, rather than delusions of her tormented mind? Or could it be that a criminal conspiracy is to blame for the psychic phenomena, as well as a second murder cunningly concealed in the past?

In the company of Dr. Watson, the indefatiguable Holmes will track down the perpetrators through the occult underworld of Victorian London.

Next, on the eve of World War I, Holmes is confronted with fraud and forgery at the Royal Naval Academy in “The Case of a Boy’s Honor.” While back in London, behind the scenes of the Herculaneum Theatre in the Strand, “The Case of the Matinee Idol” embroils Holmes and Watson directly in an apparent onstage murder. How did poison get into two Shakespearean goblets when only the victim, now dead, had access to them and the most likely suspect was a mile away with an unthinkable alibi?

Here are five stunning novellas featuring the great detective, by the acknowledged master of Sherlockian pastiche.

In these five tales of intellectual derring-do, Sherlock Holmes is shown at the height of his powers. He cooperates with a young Winston Churchill in the famed Siege of Sydney Street, helps defeat a plan for a German invasion outlined in the Zimmermann Telegram, establishes a link between two missing lighthouse keepers and the royal treasures of King John, and more.

Included are: “The Case of the Tell-Tale Hands,” “The Case of the King’s Evil,” “The Case of the Portuguese Sonnets,” “The Case of Peter the Painter,” and “The Case of the Zimmermann Telegram.”

Drugged, manacled, condemned to a dank cell in the depths of London’s infamous Newgate prison, the world’s greatest literary detective awaits execution by a vengeful crew of formidable enemies. Escape is impossible; death, a certainty. But not for Sherlock Holmes, who, in a stunning display of intellect and derring-do, will elude his hangman’s noose and live to fiddle, spy, and ratiocinate another day.

Against tremendous odds Holmes will continue to defy his enemies in four more encounters, from cracking German intelligence codes, to going against Scotland Yard and the Crown in proving the innocence of a man condemned to death for the slaying of a pregnant serving girl, to an arsenic-wielding magician, and of course, to a battle of wits with the malevolent Moriarty. Everywhere in these five finely wrought tales, riddles and mystery hover in the air. But they are not beyond the grasp of the incomparable Sherlock Holmes.