A chance meeting with a Sussex beekeeper turns into a pivotal, personal transformation when fifteen-year-old Mary Russell discovers that the beekeeper is the reclusive, retired detective Sherlock Holmes, who soon takes on the role of mentor and teacher.

In 1923, an amateur archaeologist brings Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes an inlaid box from the Holy Land and then promptly dies in a suspicious traffic accident that leaves the master detective and Mary with a dangerous manuscript seemingly written by Mary Magdalene.

In 1919, Sherlock Holmes and his future wife Mary Russell are smuggled into Palestine under cover of darkness. Disguised as Arabs they foil a Turkish plot to regain control of Jerusalem from the British.

Mary Russell is settling in for a much-needed rest with her husband, Sherlock Holmes, but when Holmes' gravely ill brother brings news of a mystery, the couple set off to solve another mystery that is complicated by the government, family ties, and a decades-old secret.

For Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad was especially sweet. There was even a mystery to solve: the disappearance of an entire colony of bees from Holmes' hives. But the sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by the return of a galling memory from the past.

At the request of Scotland Yard, Mary Russell travels undercover to the set of English silent-film megalomaniac Randolph Fflytte's latest cinematic extravaganza, Pirate King, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. The company starts rehearsals in Lisbon, but when the crew embarks for Morocco and the actual filming, Russell senses ominous currents of trouble. As movie make-believe becomes true terror, Russell and Holmes themselves...

"It is a normal afternoon in Sussex when Russell and Holmes return home to find a peculiar addition to their garden: a beautiful stone that once occupied the Imperial gardens in Kyoto. The stone immediately recalls the spring of 1924, when, on their way back from India (The Game), Russell and Holmes agreed to perform a small but exceedingly dangerous job for the emperor of Japan. At the time, Russell encountered a young Japanese woman on board their...

"Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes untangle the slippery threads of insanity and deadly secrets as they investigate a disappearance in the New York Times bestselling series that Lee Child called "the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today." A June summer's evening, on the Sussex Downs, in 1925. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are strolling across their orchard when the telephone rings: an old friend's beloved aunt has failed to...

"A queen, a castle, a dark and ageless threat--all await Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes in this chilling new adventure. The queen is Marie of Roumania: the doubly royal granddaughter to Victoria, Empress of the British Empire, and Alexander II, Tsar of Russia. A famous beauty who was married at seventeen into Roumania's young dynasty, Marie had beguiled the Paris Peace Conference into returning her adopted country's long-lost provinces, single-handedly...

"A dynamic short story collection that illuminates many hidden corners of the beloved, best-selling Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. Since the first book-length "memoir" appeared in 1994, famous partner, Sherlock Holmes, has excited a community of readers, young and old. With this collection, nine previously published short stories and one never-before-seen Sherlock Holmes mystery are brought together for the first time.."--Page 4 of cover....