A banker accepts a priceless British artifact as collateral for a loan and it is promptly stolen from his home's safe. Circumstances point to the banker's son, who bitterly denies taking it. Holmes allows his investigation to follow the trail of evidence, come what may.

Holmes comes up against a troublesome female villain and a gang of intimidators when he offers to help the widow of a past client who has received a suspicious offer to sell her house and everything in it.

A woman's life is thrown into disarray, the object of sudden publicity, when she receives a tobacco box filled with coarse salt and . . . two unmatched human ears. Why has she, of all people, become the recipient of so ghastly a package?

Holmes is desperately asked to rescue the kidnapped only son of the Duke of Holdernesse.

The fifth story from Doyle's "Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" (The Strand/1893) reveals the roots of the detective's foray into criminology and his very first case as a young college student, when the death of his school chum's father unearths a terrible, tragic series events upon the high seas, of plotting and murder, of betrayal -- and the man's long-hidden secrets of another life.

Evidence of murder, ransacked ancient mummies, giving away a beloved dog, and a horse race upon which a man's life and future depend are just four of the elements of this Holmes story, making it one of the most memorable (and chilling) cases in the Sherlockian Canon.

Sherlock Holmes is summoned by a woman whose face, years before, was horribly disfigured during an attack by a circus lion. Upon his arrival with Watson, the woman, her face perpetually hidden by a heavy veil, tells them she knows she does not have long to live and wishes to finally reveal what really happened on that awful day.

The destruction of duplicate plaster casts of the famous head of Napoleon by the French sculptor, Devine, becomes more than a mere curiosity to Sherlock Holmes when a murder is committed during the commission of one of the crimes. The case begins at the shop of Morse Hudson, who has a place for the sale of pictures and statues in the Kennington Road. The burglaries and destructions escalate until, with the brutal slaying, it becomes obvious that...

Sherlock Holmes first regards the experiences related by newly-arrived visitor Violet Smith with a degree of impatience and disinterest. This solitary cyclist, however, is being shadowed by a mysterious man on a bicycle as she travels to and from her new employer's home as a music teacher. As Holmes and Watson investigate, a dark, dangerous picture begins to emerge that threatens the young lady's safety and ultimately her freedom.

A call comes for Holmes' assistance from Inspector Hopkins. The facts behind the murder of Sir Eustace Brackenstall during an invasion robbery seem simple enough, until a possible lie by his wife, and inconsistencies in the evidence, suggest her accounts of the crime may be disguising the truth for personal reasons.