This volume, authorized by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's estate, contains all 4 full-length novels and all 56 short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. At over a thousand pages, the weighty tome is a perfect gift for budding amateur sleuths, and it is an ideal companion for a long stay on a desert island (or a leisurely trip through the English countryside). As the reader wades past the tense introductions of A Study in Scarlet and moves towards such classic tales as The Hound of the Baskervilles, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," and "The Final Problem," she is sure to draw her own conclusions about Holmes's veiled past and his quirky relationship with his "Boswell," Watson. Doyle never revealed much about Holmes's early life, but the joy of reading the complete Holmes is assembling the trivia of each story into something like a portrait of the detective and his creator. By the end of the long journey through London and across Europe (with a long stopover at Reichenbach Falls), one is apt to have found a friend for life. --Patrick O'Kelley

FROM OUR EDITORS

Barnes & Noble Classics offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Complete Sherlock Holmes comprises four novels and fifty-six short stories revolving around the world’s most popular and influential fictional detective—the eccentric, arrogant, and ingenious Sherlock Holmes. He and his trusted friend, Dr. Watson, step from Holmes’s comfortable quarters at 221b Baker Street into the swirling fog of Victorian London to combine detailed observation and vast knowledge with brilliant deduction. Inevitably, Holmes rescues the innocent, confounds the guilty, and solves the most perplexing puzzles known to literature. Volume II of The Complete Sherlock Holmes begins with The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, tired of writing about Holmes, had killed him off at the end of “The Final Problem,” the last tale in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (found in Volume I of The Complete Sherlock Holmes). Public demand for new Holmes stories was so great, however, that Conan Doyle eventually resurrected him. The first story in The Return, “The Adventure of the Empty House,” features Conan Doyle’s infamously inventive explanation of how Holmes escaped what seemed like certain death. This volume also includes two other collections of Holmes stories, His Last Bow and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes; Conan Doyle’s final full-length Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear; a pair of parodies, “The Field Bazaar” and “How Watson Learned the Trick”; and two essays about the “private life” of the beloved sleuth. Introduction and Notes by Kyle Freeman “What sort of person dedicates himself to catching people who commit crimes? We don’t need a psychiatrist’s shingle to conclude that someone who feels this need must have suffered some sort of injustice as a child. As we can never know what this sad event was, we can only speculate, and many have. Whatever it was, it has made Holmes a moralist. It is not the law that he upholds, but his own conception of justice.” —from the Introduction by Kyle Freeman A Sherlock Holmes enthusiast for many years, Kyle Freeman earned two graduate degrees in English literature from Columbia University, where his major was twentieth-century British literature. He has seen just about all the Holmes movies of the last sixty years, as well as the television series with Jeremy Brett. Now working as a computer consultant, he constantly puts into practice Sherlock Holmes’s famous statement—“Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887, and the popularity of the famed sleuth singularly determined the author’s enduring legacy. But in addition to his mysteries, nonfiction, and historical works, Doyle enjoyed many adventures of his own. In 1900 he traveled to South Africa as a war-time physician in Cape Town; his treatise on the Boer War earned him a knighthood in 1902. During World War I, Conan Doyle served as a war correspondent. And from 1920 until his death in 1930, the author wrote, traveled, and lectured to promote his belief in spiritualism.

FROM THE CRITICS

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