Sherlock Holmes: Crimes for Christmas (2024)

A collection of new Holmes stories for the holidays from Belanger Books and the Strand Magazine.

An Advent Calendar of Twelve All New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes for Christmas is a collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories to be read over the holiday season (i.e. from December 1st to December 26th). Each story is divided into two sections. The first day provides the case to the reader. The second day provides the ending. You get to think like Sherlock Holmes and see if you can solve the case before reading the thrilling conclusion.

Mysteries Include:

The Adventure of the Dreadful Author

The Auction of the Prehistoric Beast

The Christmas Ripper

The Adventure of the Gentle Axe Murderer

The Bordello Endemic

The Adventure of the Generous Miser

Dr. Watson Takes the Case

And many, many more traditional Sherlock Holmes adventures!

Title: Sherlock Holmes: Crimes for Christmas
Author: Derrick Belanger
Year: 2024
Publisher: Belanger Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975)

No, not Mycroft. It's Sigerson! This is the novelization of the 1975 film written, directed, and starring Gene Wilder.

Can the sexual insecurities of one young beauty determine the fate of England?
Of course. But how?

Elementary!

Huh? As you can see, this is no case for any ordinary detective.
This is a case for...

Sigerson Holmes? 

It's Sherlock's smarter brother (believe us, he's not ordinary) up to the family snuff in a riotous case of stolen documents and stolen love where one clue doesn't necessarily lead to another–but you're too busy laughing to care!

Title: The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother
Author: Gilbert Pealman
Year: 1975
Publisher: Ballantine
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Consultations of Sherlock Holmes (2023)

A unique set of sixteen Holmes stories featuring the great detective in his self-stated role as "Consulting Detective."

Instead of focusing on the usual mysteries in which Sherlock Holmes is the primary investigator, this volume puts a spotlight on an oft-overlooked part of his career in detection, putting the emphasis on his role as a consultant. 

For the first time ever, The Consultations of Sherlock Holmes collects sixteen ingenious cases in which he serves as a last resort for other detectives – both private investigators and those from the official police force – who come to Holmes for his unique perspective and aid as "the only unofficial consulting detective" in the world.

Title: The Consultations of Sherlock Holmes
Editor: Ray Riethmeier
Year: 2023
Publisher: Belanger Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Sherlock Holmes Solves the Mystery of Edwin Drood (1924)

A very early Holmes pastiche by Harry B. Smith published in Munsey magazine in December 1924.

THE FAMOUS DETECTIVE APPLIES HIS CRITICAL METHOD TO THE MOST FASCINATING OF ALL LITERARY PUZZLES

Title: Sherlock Holmes Solves the Mystery of Edwin Drood
Author: Harry B. Smith
Year: 1924
Publisher: Munsey Magazine
Read: Roy Glashan's Library

The Adventure of the Frankenstein Monster (2006)

Here's an irresistible pairing for Halloween. Sherlock Holmes investigates the monster of Frankenstein. It's alive!

Victor Frankenstein creates life from the dead, alone, in his Geneva laboratory. His friend, Clerval, becomes concerned for Victor's health when he is suddenly missing and travels to London, England, to consult 'privately' with his old schoolmate Dr. John Watson. Hearing a strange lie about events told to Watson, Sherlock Holmes takes it upon himself to delve into the strange particulars of the matter. Holmes, Watson and Frankenstein embark on a fantastic journey across the frozen wastelands of icy terror and helplessly observe as all around them meet their most gruesome death at the hands of the Frankenstein Monster.

Title: The Adventure of the Frankenstein Monster

Author: Don W. Baranowski

Year: 2006

Publisher: Infinity Publishing

Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Hellbirds (1976)

Austin Mitchelson and Nicholas Utechin's follow-up to their first Holmes pastiche The Earthquake Machine. This one brings the great detective into World War I intrigue.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST DETECTIVE 

In December of 1914, while the two greatest armies in history were deadlocked across Europe from the North Sea to the Alps, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were called in to investigate the mysterious death of a man who had fallen victim to a vicious flock of birds. There is more to it than first apparent, however–for an evil genius, the German master spy Von Bork, is planning to infiltrate all of England. A new Sherlock Holmes thriller by the authors of THE EARTHQUAKE MACHINE.

Title: Hellbirds
Author: Austin Mitchelson & Nicholas Utechin
Year: 1976
Publisher: Belmont Tower Books
Purchase: Amazon.

Sherlock Holmes and the Houdini Birthright (1995)

Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini set out to save Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from fraudulent psychics.

Here's another Sherlock Holmes pastiche from the fertile pen of Val Andrew. Again two areas of mystery are linked: the exploits of Shelock Holmes and the secrets of master escapologist, Harry Houdini. Doctor Watson's collaborator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, finds himself drawn into the world of fake psychics and Houdini is anxious for Holmes to unmask the perpertrators who prey on the innocent believers.

Once he has been torn away from his beekeeping activities, Holmes's investigations lead him to some surprising locations including a Ruritanian castle. Sherlockians, historians and magic buffs will all be intrigued and delighted with this classic detective story which links fact and a little fiction to suggest what may have happened to Houdini after death.

Again .... the game is afoot.

Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Houdini Birthright
Author: Val Andrews
Year: 1995
Publisher: Breese Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Adventure of the Peerless Peer (1974)

The 1974 hardcover edition of Philip Jose Farmer's Holmes-Tarzan mashup, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer. Published as a Dell paperback in 1976.

The "Peerless Peer" of the title is none other than Lord Greystroke, the jungle-born scion of a noble English family, a duke in Britain, but in his larger estate of Central Africa, a king. The time is 1916, at the height of the Great War. The foreign office learns that a deadly formula has been stolen from the allies by Sherlock Holmes's old foe, the German agent, Von Bork. Sherlock Holmes & Watson are called to travel to Africa to retrieve the formula. A meandering adventure story by Philip Jose Farmer, a three time Hugo award winner.

Title: The Adventure of the Peerless Peer

Author: Philip Jose Farmer

Year: 1974

Publisher: Aspen Press

Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell (2024)

Nicholas Meyer is back with his sixth Holmes novel. 

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson cross the Atlantic at the height of World War I in pursuit of a mysterious coded telegram in this new mystery from the author of The Return of the Pharaoh.

June, 1916. With a world war raging on the continent, exhausted John H. Watson, M.D. is operating on the wounded full-time when his labors are interrupted by a knock on his door, revealing Sherlock Holmes, with a black eye, a missing tooth and a cracked rib. The story he has to tell will set in motion a series of world-changing events in the most consequential case of the detective’s career.

Amid rebellion in Ireland and revolution in Russia, Germany has a secret plan to win the war and Sir William Melville of the British Secret Service dispatches the two aging friends to learn what the scheme is before it can be put into effect. In pursuit of a mysterious coded telegram sent from Berlin to an unknown recipient in Mexico, Holmes and Watson must cross the Atlantic, dodge German U-boats and assassination attempts, and evade the intrigues of young J. Edgar Hoover, while enlisting the help of a beautiful, eccentric Washington socialite as they seek to foil the schemes of Holmes’s nemesis, the escaped German spymaster Von Bork.

Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell plunges Holmes into a world that eerily resembles our own, where entangling alliances, treaties, and human frailty threaten to create another cataclysm.

Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell 
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 2024
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Moriarty (2008)

John Gardner's long-delayed third book in his Professor Moriarty trilogy, originally titled The Redemption of Moriarty, was published posthumously in 2008 as just Moriarty.

Bestselling British novelist John Gardner published two books purporting to be the true history of Professor James Moriarty, archenemy of Sherlock Holmes, the Napoleon of crime. The books - The Return of Moriarty and The Revenge of Moriarty - were praised as stand-alone volumes set in a vividly accurate Victorian London and a stunning vision of the underworld of the time, inhabited by the kind of men and women who lived and preyed on the society of the late 19th century. 

Now it is the turn of the century and Moriarty has been away from London for several years, realizing his plans to set up crime syndicates in major U. S. cities. He is suddenly called back to London where his vast criminal society has been overrun by a rival concern led by the shadowy Sir Jordan 'Mad Jack' de Levant - a supposed gentleman hoodlum who is acting on behalf of the leaders of well-known criminal elements in France, Italy, Spain and Germany. 

Moriarty lives again and revolts against the upstart criminals who have attempted to oust him from his rightful place as king of all criminal endeavour.

Title: Moriarty
Author: John Gardner
Year: 2008
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon (1997)

The first of a series of Holmes adventures set in Minnesota by Larry Millett.

In the summer of 1994, a workman at the historic mansion of railroad baron James J. Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, stumbles on a long-hidden wall safe. When experts arrive to open the safe and examine its contents, they make an astonishing discovery. There, inside, is a handwritten manuscript bearing the signature of John H. Watson, M.D.

The manuscript contains the story of how Sherlock Holmes and Watson traveled to Minnesota to track a murderous arsonist—known only as the Red Demon—who is threatening both Hill and his Great Northern Railway. Set against the backdrop of the real, devastating Hinckley forest fire of 1894, Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon is the tense and atmospheric first novel in Larry Millett’s classic series of adventures that brought Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to Minnesota.

Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon
Author: Larry Millett
Year: 1997
Publisher: Penguin Group
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Grim Game (2024)

Sherlock Holmes investigates the death of Harry Houdini in this well-researched audio play by Scott McQuaid and Pop Up Theater. (The Grim Game was the title of a movie the real Houdini made in 1919.)

Click here for more Holmes and Houdini crossovers.

Five Miles Of Country (2024)

The third Holmes tale "as discovered by Gretchen Altabef." Lots of crossover fun in this one.

The year is 1896. Sherlock Holmes meets Thomas Edison. At the dawn of Cinema, a beautiful Broadway danseuse is murdered in Edison’s New Jersey Laboratory. Irene Adler encounters ghosts on Broadway. Harry Houdini mystifies the New York Vaudeville circuit. Holmes and Watson go hunting in New York City’s Badlands with Police Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt. Meanwhile, Rachel Holmes journeys to the Pine Barrens to film the Jersey Devil and the denizens of Poughkeepsie reel in Kipsy the Hudson River Monster.

Title: Five Miles Of Country
Author: Gretchen Altabef
Year: 2024
Publisher: MX Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

These Scattered Houses (2019)

A Holmes tale "as discovered by Gretchen Altabef." The first in a trilogy.

A client forsworn, a threatened town, and a Goliath of unimaginable proportions . ....Sherlock Holmes has survived a three-year vendetta against him by Moriarty’s remaining henchmen. Wounded and bleeding, with Mycroft’s help he clandestinely boards an Atlantic steamship. At the close of his great hiatus, Holmes finds sanctuary at Vassar Women’s College.

This radical challenge entangles him in the web of a nefarious mystery. Its unraveling involves New York’s most revolutionary residents: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. To pluck his client from danger, he drafts the twenty-year-old Harry Houdini in outrageous sleight of hand. Four villains embroil the plot. The lives of everyday citizens inexorably rise to heroism.

And it all begins when a twelve-year-old girl matches wits with Sherlock Holmes on Market Street.

These Scattered Houses is a daring adventure in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As Professor Sigerson the pansophic gentleman of justice, Holmes is confronted by the evil that lurks within the smiling and beautiful countryside.

Title: These Scattered Houses
Author: Gretchen Altabef
Year: 2019
Publisher: MX Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Return of Irene Adler (1983)

The Return of Irene Adler is an episode of the South African radio series The Stories of Sherlock Holmes, starring Graham Armitage as Sherlock Holmes and Kerry Jordan as Dr. Watson. Original airdate Oct. 30, 1983.

No Holidays for Sherlock Holmes (2024)

A collection of new Holmes short stories themed around holidays with an introduction by Nicholas Meyer.

From the creative team that brought you the Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery series comes an all new anthology featuring Sherlock Holmes stories that connect to holidays throughout the year. 

This anthology features some of the best known Sherlock Holmes authors today including David Marcum, Katy Darby, Geri Schear, Shelby Phoenix, Steve Herczeg, Will Murray, Greg Maughn, S.F. Bennett, Kevin Thornton, Derrick Belanger, Lee Shackleford, Hassan Akram, David Stuart Davies, and Gustavo Bondoni 

Plus, a cover by The Strand and Sherlock Holmes: a Year of Mystery artist Jeffrey McKeever! 

Introduction by Nicholas Meyer, author of The Seven Percent Solution.

Title: No Holidays for Sherlock Holmes
Author: Richard T. Ryan (editor)
Year: 2024
Publisher: Belanger Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes (1980)

Having had Holmes battle Dracula in an earlier novel, Loren D. Estleman next paired the great detective with Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. A strange case indeed.

"It is a business most dark and sinister, and before it is finished, I fear that more than one life may be ruined...."

Sherlock Holmes was right, as the savage murder of Sir Danvers Carew later proved. With Dr. John H. Watson, Holmes has already encountered the evil young hedonistic Edward Hyde and knew he was strangely connected with Henry Jekyll, the wealthy, respectable London doctor. It was not until the Queen herself requested it, however, that Holmes was officially on the case, the blackest mystery of his career! Although Robert Louis Stevenson published his tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as fiction, the hideous facts were true insofar as Stevenson knew them. Here, finally, is the entire firsthand account of that devilish crime as recorded by Dr. Watson, with an explanation of why Holmes's personal involvement had to be kept secret––until now....

Title: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes

Author: Loren D. Estleman

Year: 1980 (first published 1979)

Publisher: Penguin Books

Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

A Taste For Honey (1964)

First published in 1941, A Taste For Honey was one of the very first Holmes pastiches. The plot features a mysterious retired beekeeper who goes by the name of "Mr. Mycroft." While the original intent seems to be that this is Sherlock himself, later publishers packaged the book as a "Mycroft Holmes Mystery." Two more Mr. Mycroft adventures followed: Reply Paid (1945) and The Notched Hairpin (1949).

MURDERED...BY BEES? 

Who is Mr. Mycroft? The true identity of this magnificent, inscrutable old gentleman is a deep secret–but there are echoes of Baker Street in his voice, and a familiar gleam in his eyes that miss no clue.

In A Taste for Honey, he meets one of the most sinister murderers of all time, and encounters one of the most fiendishly ingenious murder methods ever devised. 

Title: A Taste For Honey
Author: H.F. Heard
Year: 1964
Publisher: Lancer
Purchase: Amazon.

Eliminate The Impossible (2024)

For release in April, a collection of six Sherlock Holmes tales from Paula Hammond that challenge the possible.

Eliminate the Impossible collects six canonical tales in which Holmes and Watson encounter mummies, angels, phantoms, invisible assassins, and arcane machines ... or so it might appear to those without a carefully stocked brain attic. 

From Medieval London, to the snow-capped mountains Turkey, from dusty Admiralty vaults, to the glitz and glamour of the Orient Express, from the days of fledgling friendship, to the backdrop of World War I, this new collection invites you to celebrate deduction, forensic science, and logic ... and Eliminate the Impossible.

Title: Sherlock Holmes Eliminate The Impossible
Author: Paula Hammond
Year: 2024
Publisher: MX Publishers
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles (2024)

A wholly unique take on a "Holmes" mystery from Elizabeth Crowens. This is Book One of the "Babs Norman Hollywood Mystery" series. You can read an interview with the author at Dan Andriacco's Baker Street Beat.

Asta, the dog from the popular Thin Man series, has vanished, and production for his next film is pending. MGM Studios offers a huge reward, and that's exactly what young private detectives Babs Norman and Guy Brandt need for their struggling business to survive. Celebrity dognapping is now a growing trend. When the police and city pound ridicule Basil Rathbone and ask, "Sherlock Holmes has lost his dog?" Basil also hires the B. Norman Agency to find his missing Cocker Spaniel.

The three concoct a plan for Basil to assume his on-screen persona and round up possible suspects, including Myrna Loy and William Powell; Dashiell Hammett, creator of The Thin Man; Nigel Bruce, Basil's on-screen Doctor Watson; Hollywood-newcomer, German philanthropist and film financier Countess Velma von Rache, and the top animal trainers in Tinseltown. Yet everyone will be in for a shock when the real reason behind the canine disappearances is even more sinister than imagined.

Title: Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles
Author: Elizabeth Crowens
Year: 2024
Publisher: Level Best - Historia
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Loch Ness Horror (2022)

The adventures of Sherlock Holmes and his American daughter, Lucy James, continue in this 32nd book.

A shadowy ruin. A monstrous plot. And unless Sherlock and Lucy can stop an evil mastermind, thousands of innocent lives will end in horror.

July, 1900. The Baker Street team travels to Inverness, Scotland, home to the Scottish whiskey trade, the Highland Games, and the fabled castle of the infamous King Macbeth. But they have no plans for sightseeing. They are searching for the murderers who kidnapped one of their allies, and who are using millions of dollars worth of stolen bonds to fund a deadly attack on thousands of innocent citizens. Unless the murderers are stopped, the entire British government may fall.

Their search leads to a haunted ruin on the shores of a vast and mysterious lake, the largest in all of Great Britain. There, the danger intensifies, and soon the Baker Street Team must face the full force of the horror they have uncovered.

Will they act in time to save thousands of unsuspecting citizens? Or will they meet a monstrous end beneath the cold and merciless depths of Loch Ness?

Title: The Loch Ness Horror
Author: Anna Elliott & Charles Veley
Year: 2022
Publisher: Independently Published
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Vanishing White Elephant (1945)

Another Holmes radio pastiche starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

The Vanishing White Elephant is the 6th episode of season 6 of the American radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It first aired on WOR-MBS (the Mutual Network) on October 8, 1945. 

New Year's Eve off the Scilly Isles (1947)

Let's start the New Year with something a little different but still in our wheelhouse of Holmes pastiche. This original radio drama, New Year's Eve off the Scilly Isles, finds Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson racing to save a luxury liner from destruction. It first aired on December 28, 1947. Enjoy.

The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is an old-time radio show which aired in the USA from 1939 to 1950. The series was based on the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. For most of the show's run, the program starred Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Other actors played Holmes and Watson in later seasons.