The New Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes The Defaced Men

Sherlock Holmes delves into the world of early cinema as motion picture groundbreaker Eadweard Muybridge begs him to solve a mystery that will keep you up all night… 1896. A new client at Baker Street claims he’s being threatened via the new art of the moving image… Eadweard Muybridge, pioneer of motion picture projection, believes his life is in danger. Twice he has been almost run down in the street by the same mysterious carriage, and moreover, disturbing alterations have been made to his lecture slides. These are closely guarded, yet just before each lecture an unknown hand has defaced images depicting Muybridge himself, which he has discovered, to his horror, only as he projects them to his audience. As Holmes and Watson investigate, a bewildering trail of clues only deepens the mystery, and meanwhile, newspaper speculation reaches fever pitch. The great detective’s reputation is on the line, and may be ruined for good unless he can pick apart a mystery centred the capturing, for the first time, of figures in motion, and the wonders of the new cinematograph.

A thrilling chase as Sherlock Holmes is set a fiendish puzzle by Irene Adler over a snowy London Christmas, in this stunningly packaged mystery. Sherlock Holmes’s discovery of a mysterious musical score initiates a devious Christmas challenge set by Irene Adler, with clues that are all variations on the theme of ‘theft without theft', such as a statue missing from a museum found hidden in the room it was taken from. In the snowy London lead-up to Christmas, Holmes’s preoccupation with the "Adler Variations" risks him neglecting the case of his new client, Norwegian arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who has received a series of threats in the form of animal carcasses left on his doorstep. Could they really be gifts from a strange spirit that has pursued Nansen since the completion of his expedition to cross Greenland? And might this case somehow be related to Irene Adler’s great game?

Sherlock Holmes assists a popular mystery writer whose plots seem to be coming to life. May 1898. A new client arrives at Baker Street - Abigail Moone, a wealthy, independent writer of successful mystery stories under a male pseudonym. She presents an unusual problem. Abigail claims that she devised a man's death that was reported in that morning's newspaper: that is, she planned his murder as an event to be included in one of her mystery stories. Following real people and imagining how she might murder them and get away with it is how Abigail comes up with her plots, but this victim has actually died, apparently of the poison method she meticulously planned in her notebook. Someone is trying to frame Abigail for his death, but with the evidence stacking up against her, she turns to Holmes to prove her innocence.

In 1881, a weary doctor - wounded while serving in the military in Afghanistan - returned to London, only to be introduced to a most unusual young man who was already making a name for himself as the world’s first consulting detective. At that time, the young man and his unique colleague were only just in their late twenties, unaware of their legendary futures... but they would go on to become two of the most famous and recognizable figures in the world: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson. In 1887, Holmes and Watson’s first investigation as a team - A Study in Scarlet - was published. The Sign of Four followed in 1890, and then, in 1891, the world was electrified with the publication of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the newly-formed Strand Magazine... and the world would never be the same! Through the remainder of the nineteenth Century and all the way through the twentieth, Holmes and Watson’s fame would grow. We’re now well into the twenty-first century, yet the much-loved duo are just as popular today - if not even more so. In 2015, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories burst upon the scene, featuring stories set within the canon’s correct time period, written by the very best of today’s Sherlockian authors from around the world. That first anthology, spread over three huge volumes, contained sixty-three stories and was the largest collection of its kind assembled at the time. Response was immediately and overwhelmingly positive, and soon there were calls from fans for additional collections. Over 150 contributors so far have joined together from around the world to produce well over three hundred new adventures to honour Sherlock Holmes, the man described by Watson as “the best and wisest whom I have ever known.” We now proudly present Parts XIII, XIV, and XV, three volumes which break the record of the initial triple offering, with an incredible sixty-six new adventures featuring the eternal duo Watson and Holmes. *** Part XIII in the popular MX series of new Sherlock Holmes stories features contributions from Derrick Belanger, Mark Mower, Brenda Seabrook, David Marcum, Robert Stapleton, S.F. Bennett, Edwin A. Enstrom, M.J.H. Simmonds, Andrew Bryant, Tim Gambrell, Tracy Revels, Hugh Ashton, Sean M. Wright, Marino C. Alvarez, Paul Hiscock, Arthur Hall, Kevin P. Thornton, Stephen Seitz, Jim French, David Friend, Shane Simmons, Peter Coe Verbica, and Mark Wardecker with a Poem by Jacquelynn Morris and Forewords by Will Thomas, Roger Johnson, Melissa Grigsby, Steve Emecz and David Marcum

Part IX: 2018 Annual (1879-1895) features contributions by: Deanna Baran, Roger Riccard, David Marcum, Tracy Revels, S.R. Bennett, Nick Cardillo, Robert Stapleton, Kevin Thornton, Leslie Charteris and Denis Green, Shane Simmons, James Moffett, C.H. Dye, Stephan Gaspar, Marcia Wilson, Sonia Featherstone, Geri Schear, David Friend, Mark Mower, and a poem by Amy Thomas… and Forewords in both volumes by Nicholas Meyer, Roger Johnson, and David Marcum. Once again, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson continue in this acclaimed anthology series, with thirty-seven new tales presented in two companion volumes – more Holmes than could fit into one book! In 2015, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories was first published, a huge three-book set featuring over sixty new traditional Holmes exploits, all set within the correct time period. Soon, the demand for even more traditional Holmes adventures led to further volumes. The next year brought Part IV: 2016 Annual, and then Part V: Christmas Adventures. In spring 2017 there was Part VI: 2017 Annual, and that fall revealed the massive two-volume set, Parts VII and VIII: Eliminate the Impossible. Now we present another two simultaneous volumes, Parts IX and X: 2018 Annual (1879-1895) and (1896-1916). There can be no argument that Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous and recognizable figures in the world. There were only sixty narratives brought to us by the original Literary Agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Clearly that is not enough. Watson once wrote that he kept his unpublished cases in his old Tin Dispatch Box. Now, with the publication of these latest volumes, that box has again been explored by some of today’s best Sherlockian writers, all of whom are donating their royalties from these anthologies toward the restoration of Undershaw, one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s houses, and the location where The Hound of the Baskervilles and many later Holmes stories were completed. Climb the seventeen steps to the sitting room at 221b Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are waiting... The game is afoot!

It's 1890. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson return to Baker Street after a night pursuing a vicious criminal. Inspector Lestrade is waiting for Holmes with a proposition of national importance. Lestrade tells Holmes that a school of detection has been formed to train a new breed of modern investigators that will serve in Great Britain and the Empire. Most students will become police officers. Some, however, will become bodyguards and spies. Holmes begins instructing his decidedly curious assortment of students from home and abroad. He does so with his customary gusto and inventiveness. Scotland Yard, in the main, allocates crimes to solve and Holmes mentors his students. Occasionally, he shadows them in disguise in order to assess or even directly test their abilities with creative scenarios he devises. Certain crimes investigated by the students might appear trivial, such as the re-positioning of an ornament atop a garden wall, yet it will transpire an assassin has moved the ornament to create good sightlines in order to commit murder with a sniper's rifle. Other mysteries are considered outside the domain of the police. For example, the inexplicable disappearance of a stone gargoyle, which is linked to an ancient family curse. Or a man suffering from amnesia who discovers that not only has he acquired a secret life but also gained an implacable enemy, too. Holmes, with the ever- trustworthy Doctor Watson in his wake, is kept busy with his students' cases, ranging from minor to serious, sometimes rectifying their mistakes and saving them from a variety of disasters. These eleven wonderful new adventures and intrigues include tales such as 'The Gargoyles of Killfellen House', 'Sherlock Holmes and the Four Kings of Sweden' and 'The Case of the Cannibal Club'.