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This compilation, comprising a Baker's (Street) Dozen of his adventures, re-creates the gas-lit, fog-enshrouded world of Victorian London as once more Sherlock Holmes urges, 'Come, Watson, the game is afoot!'

The recent death of one of the descendants of Dr. Watson has brought to light his personal papers. These include a number of stories that Dr. Watson suppressed at the time for various reasons. As all involved are long dead, the inheritor has agreed to the publication of a set of eight of the most interesting adventures.

In Sherlock Holmes and The Dead Boer at Scotney Castle, the great consulting detective comes up against the rich and powerful Kipling League. Dr Watson recounts the extraordinary events which took place on a spacious early summer day in the Sussex and Kent countryside in 1904. None of the earlier stories chronicling the adventures of Sherlock Holmes compares to the strange circumstances which determined Watson to take up his pen

Meet Osbert Brinkhoff, the unlikeliest of avengers. His is a tale of dark delights and ghastly goings-on, of injustice and revenge. The villains are vicious. The settings are sinister. And good does NOT always prevail.... If you prefer cleavers to kittens and fiends to fairies...then welcome to the dark, hilarious world of Schwartzgarten.

Meet Eugene, the most portly of princes, and Kalvitas, the most courageous of chocolate makers. Theirs is a tale of cakes and cowardice, bullies and battles, as they set out to defeat a terrifying tyrant. The characters are cursed. The desserts are deadly. And people are not always as they appear....

When twins Greta and Feliks lose their beloved Aunt Gisela to a poisoned marzipan cake and are sent to the ill-omened Schwartzgarten Reformatory for Maladjusted Children it seems their fate is sealed... that is until they are rescued by the glamorous and wealthy Olga Van Veenen, a fabulous children's author. The two twins are grateful but something tells them that Olga's motives are not entirely genuine...

One man. One year. So many ways to screw up.…William has a 12-year-old boss bent on his destruction; the interior design duo from hell re-decorating his bathroom; and an angry small person with a mean right hook on his case. On the plus side, he has as a gorgeous wife and an adorable (but insomniac) new son - and he loves them both. It’s just a shame that parenthood doesn’t stop him doing the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time, with catastrophic results for his small - and increasingly exasperated - family.

William is a happy man. He has just married Isabel, the girl of his dreams, and is confidently sailing along on a sea of wedded bliss. He’s got a hot wife, a snazzy new job and things couldn’t be much better. Sure, there are a few bumps in the road, but life on the whole is good. That is until Isabel’s ‘best friend’ Alex starts to intrude on their wedded bliss. And when William’s ex-girlfriend Saskia - aka the ‘Destroyer of Relationships’ - appears on the scene, things go from bad to worse.

Lettie Peppercorn lives in a house on stilts near the wind-swept coast of Albion, with no one to talk to but Periwinkle the pigeon. Her days are filled with floor-sweeping, bed-making and soup-stirring. Her nights are filled with dreams of her mother, who vanished long ago. Nothing incredible has ever happened to Lettie, until one winter’s night. The night the Snow Merchant comes. He claims to be an alchemist - the greatest that ever lived - and in a mahogany suitcase, he carries his newest invention. It is an invention that will change Lettie’s life - and the world - forever.

Arthur Bannister has been unexpectedly accepted into Shiverton Hall, which, as it turns out, is an incredibly spooky school, full of surprises. And it is just as well that Shiverton Hall has made its offer, because Arthur had a horrible time at his previous school, and was desperate to leave. Timely indeed... but Arthur has no time to worry about the strange coincidence. He is too busy trying to make head or tail of Shiverton Hall, dogged as it is by tales of curses and bad fortune.

Don’t look behind you. Resist with all your power. He’ll go away, perhaps, as long as you don’t look. Arthur Bannister is back for another term at Shiverton Hall, where eerie events are unfolding. First, a burned stranger shows up in the middle of the night uttering dire warnings. Then a young boy disappears, leaving behind only an ancient book as a clue. And then there’s that dreadful feeling Arthur has that he’s being watched . . .

On the threshold of 40, Jasper Rees fished his French horn out of the attic and, despite limited ability, sets himself a near-impossible target: to stand up in front of a paying audience in 12 months’ time and play a Mozart concerto. Alone. This is the inspired story, not only of a midlife rethink, but also of man’s first musical instrument, and its journey from the hunting fields of aristocratic France to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

William Dougal, a post-graduate expert in the medieval script of Caroline Minuscule, stumbles on the garroted corpse of his tutor and finds himself embroiled in a hunt for a cache of diamonds, in a deadly fairy story in which no one obeys the rules. Least of all Dougal's girlfriend Amanda. As the body count rises, the couple pursue the diamonds from London to an East Anglian cathedral close, from Cambridge to a wintry Suffolk estuary.

It’s a difficult time for William Dougal. He’s given up smoking and, to make matters worse, a touch of blackmail persuades him into doing a job for his old adversary James Hanbury. Nothing complicated - all he has to do is keep an eye on Dr Vertag, the leader of a lunatic fringe survival group. But he has hardly started when the barman who tried to warn him off is murdered. Suddenly Zelda appears from Dougal’s murky past. Zelda is big, black and very beautiful. And just as suddenly she is kidnapped from his flat.

Matt has a magic crystal that enables him to read minds. He can find out secrets and he has this great sense of power. It's amazing. But what Matt doesn't expect is that it's dangerous. Matt is horrified when he gets a blackmail letter. Someone has found out his secret. He is sure that he knows who the blackmailer is - but is he right?

When Alan and Mika's summer explorations are cut short by a grisly discovery, they can't understand why their parents seem so upset. Will their beach ever be just a playground again?

It is 1993 and Thomas Penmarsh has lived in Finisterre, the house by the sea, all his life, sleeping each night in the room with the barred window. He's only 48 but has been an old man since one evening in 1967 when he lost everything he valued. However, now his controlling mother has died and he is master of the house. When Esmond, his cousin and childhood confidant, comes to live with him, Thomas is overjoyed - Esmond always looks after him. But is Esmond all that he seems?

Bethan and Harry see the ghost: a pale figure floating over the water, one finger pointing downwards. Local legend says that she is Hettie Daynes, an ancestor of their family, who vanished over 100 years ago. If so, what does she want?

When Iranians overthrew their monarchy, rejecting a pro-Western shah in favor of an Islamic regime, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for decades to come. Yet 40 years after the 1978-79 revolution, Iran has emerged as a critical player in the Middle East and the wider world, as demonstrated in part by the 2015 international nuclear agreement. In Iran Rising, renowned Iran specialist Amin Saikal describes how the country has managed to survive despite ongoing domestic struggles, Western sanctions, and other serious challenges.

The national identity has been forged in the furnace of war. From the medieval kingdom of Rus battling against a Scandinavian princes and Mongol emperors, to its own empire-building conflicts in 19th-century Asia, to the formative wars of the 20th century which saw Russia pitch from Tsarist empire to communist state and defender against Nazism, all these conflicts stained the lands of Russia red with blood. A weak post-Cold War Russia then turned to Putin, who created a new mood for martial triumphalism which led directly to the Ukrainian war.