Going Out with a Bang! Large Number of Free Sherlock Holmes and Solar Pons eBooks for this Week, Author Interview with David Marcum and Paul Hiscock on Sherlock Holmes and the Great Detectives, and the Latest Episode from The Doings of Doyle Podcast
Hi everyone,
This will be our last FREE eBook blog update for a little while. To help those locked down at home during he Covid-19 crisis, we have been offering free eBooks each week for March and April. In that time, we have given away thousands of free books. My hope is that those of you who have been following the blog each week and getting books now have a small library of Belanger Books titles which will help get you through the last couple of weeks of lock down. For today we are going out with a bang by offering TWO FREE Solar Pons eBooks, TWO FREE Sherlock Holmes ebooks, PLUS four additional FREE Sherlock Holmes eBooks from author Dick Gillman.
This Week's Free eBooks
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson:The Early Adventures (Vol. III)
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson:The Early Adventures (Vol. III)
This volume, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: The Early Adventures, is an amazing collection of some of Holmes and Watson’s fascinating cases that occurred during those first three years in Baker Street, when Holmes was creating his unique profession of consulting detective, while Watson was still recovering from the war wounds that he’d received in Afghanistan and slowly returning to the business of being a civilian doctor.
Included are 31 new stories in three companion volumes by some of today’s best Sherlockian pasticheurs, as well as an excerpt from the beginning of A Study in Scarlet, detailing the initial meeting of Holmes and Watson in early 1881, as well as possibly the most famous Canonical tale, “The Speckled Band” (occurring in April 1883) and “The Resident Patient”, with its original restored opening text, as it first appeared in The Strand magazine, indicating that this adventure occurred toward the end of the first year of Holmes and Watson’s residency at 221b Baker Street.
Join us as we climb the seventeen steps to Our Heroes’ sitting room. You’ll find that they haven’t lived there quite as long in these early days, and possibly they aren’t as quite as old as you might have pictured them . . . .
Get the third volume of this incredible collection of early Sherlock Holmes adventures FOR FREE by CLICKING HERE.
The Chronicles of Solar Pons
When August Derleth died on July 4, 1971, he had written and finished revising all the stories for The Chronicles of Solar Pons. The manuscript lay on his desk, ready for final typing.This, then, is the... last major collection of the Pontine series. However much the reader may regret bidding goodbye to a cherished friend of more than forty years’ constance, the ten tales presented here make for a fine and fitting exit.The range and variety of the puzzle-problems are wide. There is the classic flight-and-pursuit motif of the espionage thriller, The Adventure of the Orient Express. The strangeness of The Adventure of the Benin Bronze and the grim search in The Adventure of the Missing Tenants are matched by the long and tangled web behind The Adventure of the Red Leech.Whether enjoyed as pure entertainment, or for the exercise of nimble minds in an attempt to outwit Solar Pons, the reader will find in these pages an additional reward: the easy flow of a prose style that is the hallmark of a superior craftsman.
Get the final volume of Solar Pons stories by August Derleth FOR FREE by CLICKING HERE.
The Return of Solar Pons Scholarship!
In 1928, college student August Derleth wrote to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, asking if any more Sherlock Holmes adventures were going to be published. Upon receiving a negative reply, Derleth decided to provide some of his own. However, rather than relating more tales of Holmes and Dr. Watson, he ended up introducing the world to Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker, living in London during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Pons solved crimes using deduction and ratiocination, often referring to Holmes as “The Master” or “My illustrious predecessor”. Since his first appearance, Pons has been a favorite with Sherlockians. Between the 1920’s and the early 1970’s, Derleth produced over seventy Pons short stories and novels, publishing them through his own imprint, Mycroft & Moran. The Pons stories were beloved within the Sherlockian community, so much so that scholarship developed about the character.We continue that tradition of Solar Pons scholarship with The Pontine Dossier, Millennium edition. Read essays on August Derleth and Solar Pons by today’s Pontine scholars as they analyze the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street. “The Game” is afoot!
Get this wonderful Solar Pons essay collection FOR FREE by CLICKING HERE.
Curse of the Deadly Dinosaur (The MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes Book 3)
Terror Strikes!
During the Christmas season, a young man named Jonas Bogswell brings a most baffling case to Sherlock Holmes and the MacDougall Twins. A dinosaur, a creature that should have been extinct millions of years ago, with razor sharp jaws and a terrifying scream, has been spotted roaming the hills of Surrey. The creature has been preying on sheep in the countryside, or has it? The local police believe Jonas Bogswell is responsible for the death of the sheep, and he needs the help of Sherlock Holmes, the MacDougall Twins, and Toby, their faithful canine friend to prove his innocence. But how can a prehistoric creature be alive in Victorian England? Could the monster have something to do with the local legend of Bald Hill where the Devil was supposedly imprisoned a hundred years before? And is Jonas Bogswell completely innocent, or does he and his family have more knowledge of the dinosaur than they've revealed? Find out as the MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes solve their most extraordinary case and learn the truth behind the curse of the deadly dinosaur!
Get this delightful Sherlock Holmes adventure for younger readers (and those who are young at heart) FOR FREE by CLICKING HERE.
More Free Sherlock Holmes eBooks
Sherlock Holmes author Dick Gillman has also made four of his Sherlock Holmes titles free on the website Smashwords. The 4 titles are:
Author Interviews with David Marcum and Chris Chan on Sherlock Holmes and the Great Detectives
There's just one week left in the Kickstarter campaign for Sherlock Holmes and the Great Detectives. For the end of the campaign we've been posting interviews with the authors so they can tell you about their story and about their great detective they've paired with Sherlock Holmes.
So far, we've had:
Today we have author interviews with David Marcum and Paul Hiscock on their stories in Sherlock Holmes and the Great Detectives.
Author interview with David Marcum
1. Tell me about your great
detective.
David Marcum: Dr. John Thorndyke
appeared in 21 novels and over 40 short stories between 1905 (in a mostly
forgotten novella before the “official” first novel) and 1942. He is both a
medical doctor and a lawyer, and specializes in medico-legal forensics. He
lives at 5a King’s Bench Walk in London, where he has an extensive laboratory,
and many of his cases involve complex scientific solutions. Most – but not all
– of his adventures are narrated by Dr. Christopher Jervis, who knew Thorndyke
when both were in college.
While Thorndyke is
considered one of the “Great Detectives” of the Golden Age, he is largely
forgotten now, which is tragic. I’m currently involved in editing all of the
original Thorndyke stories for reissue from MX Publishing, with five volumes
available so far. When completed later in 2020, there will be nine volumes, including
all of the novels, short stories, and some rare apocryphal material. I have
five more of the novels to finish editing, and then Volumes VI, VII, VIII, and
IX, containing the last 12 novels, will be published.
2. How does the detective end up
working with Holmes?
David Marcum: I initially found
Thorndyke by way of Sherlock Holmes. Several years ago, someone started putting
the Thorndyke novels and short stories on Amazon, but awkwardly changing
Thorndyke’s name to Holmes, Jervis’ to Watson, etc. As a Holmes pastiche
collector, I bought all of them, and it didn’t take long to figure out that
these had originally been Thorndyke stories. While I’m anxious for more and
more Holmes adventures, I could see that these would be better in their
original state, so I read them in the original Thorndyke version and thought
that they were amazing. Later, when I was able to make several Holmes
Pilgrimages to London, I also found time to stop at Thorndyke’s lodgings at 5a
King’s Bench Walk.
There are very few
Thorndyke pastiches – three that I’m aware of, and two are very rare and hard
to come by – and I have all of them. (Thorndyke is also mentioned in a few of
the Solar Pons adventures, as they both worked in London during the same time.)
So the chance to write a new Thorndyke adventure, and to have Thorndyke work with
Holmes, was a chance not to be missed. A number of the Thorndyke stories occur
during the last years of Holmes’s practice, before Holmes retired in 1903 and
moved to Sussex. Many of Thorndyke’s methods, and even his sayings, are very
Holmesian. In my mind, there had to be a connection between them. And while we
know a few details about Thorndyke’s past, there’s a lot that is still unknown.
I used my story to have a somewhat younger Thorndyke already being acquainted
with Holmes, and visiting in Baker Street when a visitor stops by with an
interesting case. Of course, Thorndyke gets involved, and does most of the
detecting, with a bit of guidance from Mr. Holmes.
3. What are your current and upcoming
projects? Are you working on any additional Holmes adventures?
David Marcum: I always have a
number of interesting projects in front of me. I’m currently receiving stories
for next fall’s latest MX Anthology, “Some More Untold Cases”. Also, we’ve
recently issued calls for story submissions for a couple of new Belanger Books anthologies
– one with stories relating Holmes’s activities during and after World War I,
and the other collecting a number of adventures with both Holmes and Solar
Pons. As mentioned, I’m finishing up the Thorndyke collection, with plans to
bring the complete works of another Golden Age detective back to print next
year, and I’m also editing a set of an author’s twelve stories relating what
else happened after the stories in The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Finally, I continue to write my own Holmes
pastiches, and I just paused in the middle of my 61st to jump over
and answer these questions.
4. Any last thoughts for the readers?
David Marcum: I hope that we all stay healthy and safe. I’d like to remind
everyone that The World of Holmes is a great place to escape from the current
era, and if anyone would like to contribute a story to any of the
above-mentioned collections, feel free to reach out to me if you have any
questions. Take care!
David Marcum plays The Game with deadly seriousness. He first discovered Sherlock Holmes in 1975 at the age of ten, and since that time, he has collected, read, and chronologicized literally thousands of traditional Holmes pastiches in the form of novels, short stories, radio and television episodes, movies and scripts, comics, fan-fiction, and unpublished manuscripts.
Author Interview with Paul Hiscock
1. Tell me about your great detective.
Paul Hiscock: The
Old Man in the Corner appeared in a series of stories by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
(who is best known as the creator of the Scarlet Pimpernel) between 1901 and
1925. This mysterious figure uses newspaper accounts to solve cases that have
baffled the police from the corner table of a London tea room.
2.
How does the detective end up working with Holmes?
Paul Hiscock: In
my story, the two detectives never meet. Instead the Old Man in the Corner
dissects one of Watson’s accounts and suggests to his associate, Miss Polly
Burton, that there might be more to the case than readers of the Strand
Magazine have been led to believe.
3.
What are your current and upcoming projects? Are you working on any additional
Holmes adventures?
Paul Hiscock: I
have been working on more Sherlock Holmes stories which will hopefully appear
in future collections from Belanger Books and MX Publishing. I have also been
venturing beyond the rational world of crime and deduction to write some short
stories in the realms of fantasy and science fiction.
4.
Any last thoughts for the readers?
Paul Hiscock: When
you read The Stanforth Mystery, keep your eyes peeled for a detective who has
escaped from another story from that era to play a role in this case.
Paul Hiscock is an author of crime, fantasy and science fiction tales. His
short stories have appeared in several anthologies and include a seventeenth
century whodunnit, a science fiction western and numerous mysteries featuring
Sherlock Holmes. You
can find out more about his writing at www.detectivesanddragons.uk.
That's our blog for this week. Don't forget to back Sherlock Holmes and the Great Detectives on Kickstarter by CLICKING HERE. We'll be back with more exciting news soon.
Latest Episode of the Doings of Doyle Podcast
Belanger Books is proud to sponsor The Doings of Doyle Podcast. The latest episode focuses on The Case of Lady Sannox, a short story written by Conan Doyle in 1893 as part of his Round The Red Lamp series of medical stories. A gothic masterpiece, the story is still shocking to this day.
Listen to the latest episode (and catch up on any you may have missed) by CLICKING HERE.
Comments
Post a Comment