The Castle of Otranto is a novel by Horace Walpole. First published in 1764, it is generally regarded as the first gothic novel. In the second edition, Walpole applied the word 'Gothic' to the novel in the subtitle – A Gothic Story. Set in a haunted castle, the novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetic of the book has shaped modern-day gothic books, films, art, music and the goth subculture.

Sherlock Holmes has disappeared into the Highlands, while Mycroft investigates the theft of the Mazarin diamond and Watson suspects a trap in an offer of $5 million to a former professor if he can find a third man surnamed Garrideb.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folk motifs: the beheading game, and the exchange of winnings. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel;[1] it draws on Welsh, Irish, and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an impo...

Neil Gibson, the Gold King and former senator from "some Western state", approaches Sherlock Holmes to investigate the murder of his wife Maria in order to clear his children's governess, Grace Dunbar, of the crime. It soon emerges that Mr Gibson's marriage had been unhappy and he treated his wife very badly. He had fallen in love with her when he met her in Brazil, but soon realised they had nothing in common. He became attracted to Miss Dunbar; since he could not marry her, he had attemp...

Head trainer John Mason from Shoscombe Old Place, a racing stable in Berkshire, comes to Sherlock Holmes about his master, Sir Robert Norberton, Baronet. Mason thinks he has gone mad. Sir Robert's sister, Lady Beatrice Falder, owns Shoscombe, but it will revert to her late husband's brother when she dies. The stable has a horse, Shoscombe Prince, who Sir Robert hopes will win the Derby. He would be out of debt if that actually happened.Mason is not quite sure what he wants Holmes t...

A thrilling and suspenseful short story featuring the renowned Sherlock Holmes and his remarkable companion, Doctor Watson, as they investigate the curious happenings at Three Gables.When an elderly woman, Mary Maberley, approaches Sherlock Holmes to ask for help, her case doesn’t seem interesting enough to appeal to him. Shortly after receiving her request, the masterful detective is threatened by a hired thug to stay away from the case, and he realises that there might be more to...

In 1907, some time after his retirement to the Sussex Downs, Holmes goes for a walk and meets his friend Harold Stackhurst, headmaster of a local preparatory school called "The Gables". Shortly thereafter, Stackhurst's science teacher, Fitzroy McPherson, staggers up from the nearby beach, dressed in only his overcoat and trousers. He collapses at their feet, and dies shortly thereafter, having managed to scream the words "The Lion's Mane". He has long, narrow welts curving around his body;...

A man named Trevor Bennett, the personal secretary of one Professor Presbury, comes to Holmes with a most unusual problem. He is engaged to the professor's daughter, Edith, and the Professor is himself engaged to a young lady, Alice Morphy, although he himself is already 61 years of age. Their impending marriage has caused no scandal, but the trouble seems to have begun at about the time of the engagement. First, the professor suddenly left home for a fortnight without telling anyone of hi...

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes is the final set of twelve (out of a total of fifty-six) Sherlock Holmes short stories by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle first published in the Strand Magazine between October 1921 and April 1927. These tales, puzzling to everyone else, prove no match for the observational skills of Sherlock Holmes.

Book One of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars-Series. Easy, swank, pulp read about an omnipotent gentleman teleported to Mars, finding an outlandish society of ape-, tree- and lizardmen, red-, white-, yellowmen, brains on legs, strange bastions and curious apparatuses, where the strongest survives and women are needy beauties to be saved. Imaginative and enthralling.John Carter is mysteriously conveyed to Mars, where he discovers two intelligent species continually embroiled in warfare. ...

Sherlock Holmes is hired by a retired art supply dealer from Lewisham, Josiah Amberley, to look into his young wife's disappearance. She has left with a neighbour, Dr Ray Ernest, taking a sizeable quantity of cash and securities. Amberley wants the two tracked down.Holmes is too busy with another case at the moment, so he sends Dr Watson to Lewisham to observe what he can, although Watson is keenly aware that this is more Holmes's province. He does his best, observing that Amberley...

In this third installment of the adventures of John Carter on Mars, our hero labors under sentence of death (for having returned from the land of the dead) in a heroic struggle to recover the beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium. He scours the planet from pole to pole, enduring imprisonment and torture, outwitting antagonists, reveling in carnage, accepting aid from unlikely sources, and dealing tactfully with women who love him despite his devotion to his wife. Having deprived an en...