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.

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are drawn into a bizarre mystery when an oddly familiar stranger arrives on their doorstep with a wild tale about the enigmatic Marsh Hughenfort, younger brother of the Duke of Beauville.

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...

When an anonymous homeless man is murdered amidst his band of fellow homeless in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, Inspector Kate Martinelli and her partner, Al Hawkin, uncover a chief suspect in the eccentric Brother Erasmus.

"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...