The Sensible Necktie and Other Stories of Sherlock Holmes

Someone is killing sheep in the Cotswolds. Or something. As Holmes and Watson arrive in the tranquility of a little village of shepherds and farmers to enjoy a few restful days in the idyllic countryside, strange things start to occur. While Holmes locks himself in his hotel room, consumed by depression, Watson is left to explore the surroundings on his own, acquainting himself with both the local shepherding community, the eccentric vicar, and the local folklore concerning a mysterious werewolf.

Returning home after lunch one day, Hercule Poirot finds an angry woman waiting outside his front door. She demands to know why Poirot has sent her a letter accusing her of the murder of Barnabas Pandy, a man she has neither heard of nor ever met. Poirot has also never heard of a Barnabas Pandy and has accused nobody of murder. Shaken, he goes inside, only to find that he has a visitor waiting for him - a man who also claims also to have received a letter from Poirot that morning, accusing him of the murder of Barnabas Pandy.... 

When the papal apartments are burgled in 1901, Sherlock Holmes is summoned to Rome by Pope Leo XII. After learning from the pontiff that several priceless cameos that could prove compromising to the church, and perhaps determine the future of the newly unified Italy, have been stolen, Holmes is asked to recover them. In a parallel story, Michelangelo, the toast of Rome in 1501 after the unveiling of his Pieta, is commissioned by Pope Alexander VI, the last of the Borgia pontiffs, with creating the cameos that will bedevil Holmes and the papacy four centuries later.

This book - which put Liverpool on the paranormal map - is about ghosts - whatever they are. Every culture has believed in ghosts at one time or another: Buddha trained himself to overcome fear by sitting in a haunted cemetery. Spooky tales are not just a contemporary phenomenon - there are several ghosts mentioned in the Old Testament. In the course of a person's lifetime, the chances of encountering a ghost are surprisingly high.

During the elaborate funeral for Queen Victoria, a group of Irish separatists breaks into Westminster Abbey and steals the Coronation Stone, on which every monarch of England has been crowned since the 14th century. After learning of the theft from Mycroft, Sherlock Holmes is tasked with recovering the stone and returning it to England.

The dead beckon and the girl obeys. Night after night, she answers the graveyard's call, though she dreads her encounters with the creature that dwells there. But she'll soon come to learn that memories are much more dangerous than monsters....

Dexter LeGrasse thought he was lucky to be alive. He was wrong. The only survivor of a plane crash over the Atlantic, he finds himself washed up on an uninhabited island. Dazed, dehydrated and desperate to escape, he will have to use all his wits just to stay alive in a strange and unforgiving environment. But when he discovers an ancient ruin, he unwittingly unleashes an unstoppable evil and his nightmare truly begins.

For Paul and Debbie it was meant to be the happiest time of their lives. A small village wedding in front of their family and friends, followed by a quiet honeymoon in Devon. Not everyone had been happy to see them together. A woman from their past refused to accept it. Her actions over the previous year had ended in tragedy, and had almost broken the happy couple apart. Now, away from it all in a picturesque log cabin, Paul and Debbie look forward to time spent alone together.... But she has found out where they are, and she will stop at nothing to make sure that the marriage is over...forever.

The world has crumbled, and the dead walk the Earth, but all is not lost. A group of survivors, led by weary veterinarian Anna and gruff loner Garfield, seek salvation at an abandoned pier where the dead can’t reach them. It's a place they might be able to call home, but then again, nowhere is truly safe. The dead are everywhere but aren't the only threat. Other people survived the apocalypse, and when an injured man turns up at the pier, it sets into motion a terrible chain of events. The world may have changed, but people haven’t.

The book begins with a brief examination of the effect that the stories have had on modern crime literature. It goes on to examine the origins of the character of Holmes himself from his appearance to his drug use and supposed dislike of women. We then move onto a mini-biography of some of the significant characters in the series.

London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend - until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris. Mlle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star, writes that her illegitimate son by an English lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.

In a run-down part of Newstead Haven, an apartment building is burning. The fire is unlike anything anyone has ever seen. With one poor soul still trapped inside, a group of fire fighters suit up and head into the flames on a rescue mission. But they are not alone in the inferno. An ancient evil has awoken. As the walls burn around them, the crew soon find themselves trapped and prey to a shape-shifting force with a taste for slaughter.

December 1889. Fresh from debunking a 'ghostly' hound in Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. A beautiful client arrives with a tale of ghosts, kidnapping and dynamite on a whisky estate in Scotland, but brother Mycroft trumps all with an urgent assignment in the South of France. On the fabled Riviera, Holmes and Watson encounter treachery, explosions, rival French detective Jean Vidocq...and a terrible discovery.

Look into the darkness of the human psyche, which lies behind Adam's eyes. Adam as a child believes he is the perpetrator behind a number of mysterious deaths. Is Adam a child serial killer? Surviving a chaotic childhood, he enters adulthood as a successful musician with a sublime talent, which mesmerizes his audiences. Fearing the axe of his past is about to drop, he begins to confront the traumatic shadows of his childhood, only to discover a far more sinister secret.

Here are six extraordinary adventures, never revealed before, starring Simon Callow as Sherlock Holmes and Nicky Henson as Dr Watson, written by John Taylor.