Showing results by narrator "David McCran" in All Categories

"The Final Problem" is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring his detective character Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in Strand Magazine under the title "The Adventure of the Final Problem" in December 1893. It appears in book form as part of the collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. This story, set in 1891, introduced Holmes's archenemy, the criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty. Conan Doyle later ranked "The Final Problem" fourth on his personal list of the twelve best Holmes stories.

"The Resident Patient", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Resident Patient" eighteenth in a list of his nineteen favourite Sherlock Holmes stories. Doctor Percy Trevelyan brings Holmes an unusual problem. Having been a brilliant student but a poor man, Dr. Trevelyan has found himself a participant in an unusual business arrangement.

"The Musgrave Ritual" is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The story was originally published in Strand Magazine in 1919, and was collected later in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the majority of Holmes stories, the main narrator is not Doctor Watson, but Sherlock Holmes himself. With Watson providing an introduction, the story within a story is a classic example of a frame tale. It is one of the earliest recorded cases investigated by Holmes, and establishes his problem solving skills.

The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective. The story is set in 1888. The Sign of the Four has a complex plot involving service in India, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a stolen treasure, and a secret pact among four convicts ("the Four" of the title) and two corrupt prison guards. It presents the detective's drug habit and humanizes him in a way that had not been done in the preceding novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887).

Helen Stoner worries her stepfather may be trying to kill her after he contrives to move her to the bedroom where her sister had died two years earlier, shortly before her wedding. Stoner is herself now engaged, and Holmes learns that her stepfather's annuity (from the estate of his wife — Stoner's mother) would be greatly reduced if either sister married. During a late-night investigation of the bedroom, Holmes and Watson discover a dummy bell-pull near a ventilator.

As the second book starts, Knave, Altia and Jay are coming to terms with the enormous task that lies before them. Their spaceship is faster and has weaponry superior to any imperial craft, and it also has a teleportation system that enables transport to the surface of planets. A technology no other spaceship has; an alien technology far beyond what humanity is capable of. They are also aided by the fact that the empire has become bloated and corrupt. Rebellion is in the air, across the human quadrant of the galaxy.

In Blood Star, the heroes of the series, a man named Knave and a woman named Altia, face their greatest test yet. After taking a stand against a corrupt empire and battling alien robots, the pair have to face an invasion of creatures so powerful that it endangers not just the Tarazet Star Empire, not just the whole expanse of human space, but the entire galaxy. Knave and Altia only have any chance of fending off this alien invasion because Altia is the foremost mind of her epoch, and she is backed up by Knave, who was just born lucky.

"The Adventure of the Priory School", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Priory School" tenth in his list of his twelve favorite Holmes stories.

"The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" and was published in 1904.

"The Adventure of the Dancing Men", a Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle published as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" in 1905. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" third in his list of his twelve favorite Holmes stories. This is one of only two Sherlock Holmes short stories where Holmes' client dies after seeking his help. The other is "The Five Orange Pips", part of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The original title was "The Dancing Men," when it was published as a short story in The Strand Magazine in December 1903.

"The Adventure of Black Peter" is a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle. This tale is in the collection "The Return of Sherlock Holmes", but was published originally in 1904 in the Strand Magazine and Collier's. Forest Row in the Weald is the scene of a harpoon murder, and a young police inspector, Stanley Hopkins, asks Holmes, whom he admires, for help. Holmes has already determined that it would take a great deal of strength and skill to run a man through with a harpoon and embed it in the wall behind him.

"The Adventure of the Abbey Grange", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". Holmes wakes Doctor Watson up early one winter morning to rush to a murder scene at the Abbey Grange near Chislehurst. Sir Eustace Brackenstall has been killed, apparently by burglars. Inspector Stanley Hopkins believes that it was the infamous Randall gang who have committed several other burglaries in the neighborhood.

"The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". One wretched November night, Inspector Stanley Hopkins visits Holmes at 221B Baker Street to discuss the violent death of Willoughby Smith, secretary to aged invalid Professor Coram. Coram had dismissed his previous two secretaries. The murder happened at Yoxley Old Place near Chatham, Kent, with a sealing-wax knife of the professor's as the weapon.

"The Adventure of the Six Napoleons", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard brings Holmes a mysterious problem about a man who shatters plaster busts of Napoleon. One was shattered in Morse Hudson's shop, and two others, sold by Hudson to a Dr. Barnicot, were smashed after the doctor's house and branch office had been burgled. Nothing else was taken. In the former case, the bust was taken outside before being broken.

"The Adventure of the Three Students", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson find themselves in a university town when a tutor and lecturer of St Luke's College, Mr. Hilton Soames, brings him an interesting problem. Soames had been reviewing the galley proofs of an exam he was going to give when he left his office for an hour.

"The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". It was originally published in The Strand Magazine in 1904 with illustrations by Sidney Paget.

"The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". Holmes is contacted by Miss Violet Smith of Farnham, Surrey about an unusual turn in hers and her mother's lives. Violet's father has recently died and left his wife and daughter rather poor. There was an ad in the news asking about their whereabouts. Answering it, they met Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Woodley, the former a pleasant enough man, but the latter a bully.

"The Adventure of the Second Stain", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" and the only unrecorded case mentioned passively by Watson to be written. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Second Stain" eighth in his list of his twelve favourite Holmes stories.

"The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the second tale from "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". The story was first published in The Strand Magazine in 1903 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget.

"The Adventure of the Empty House", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". Public pressure forced Conan Doyle to bring the sleuth back to life, and explain his apparently miraculous survival of a deadly struggle with Professor Moriarty. This is the first Holmes story set after his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls, as recounted in "The Final Problem". The Hound of the Baskervilles had seen the return of a pre-Reichenbach Falls Sherlock Holmes, which only served to whet readers' appetites.