Mike Hogan

Blueprints of a weapon of unimaginable power are stolen from a room in the Savoy Hotel. The management call in Sherlock Holmes, and, accompanied by his friend and companion Doctor Watson, Holmes finds that all is not as it seems. Is this a theft or a ploy by an eccentric genius to bilk the hotel? Cab driver Thomas Long is accused of a brutal murder. Things look black; the evidence is overwhelming. Can Holmes dig to the bottom of the mystery? Why does Long refuse to explain what happened on that fateful night in Hyde Park? Watson drags Holmes to a music hall and attempts to enlist his aid in a matter of libel and accusations of impropriety, but the affair soon grows darker - is a habitual killer loose in London so soon after the Ripper? A diamond merchant cannot access his safety deposit box in the London branch of the New York and Continental Bank. What at first appears to be a simple matter of technical malfunction takes on a sinister hue, and Holmes is mired in a complex case with international ramifications. Three novellas and a short story in traditional style, told by Doctor Watson with a touch of humour.

The new, eight-level course that teaches business English and business skills Business Partner gives students the practical training they need to bridge the gap between the classroom and the world of work. It helps learners to make measurable progress in learning English while helping to make them more employable. Business Partner does not assume any knowledge of the workplace, and is designed for students with no work experience. It also provides many suggestions and alternative ways to use the material for those students already in work. Each level is written to a syllabus based on the Global Scale of English Learning Objectives for Professional English to help learners evaluate their progress. Find out more at english.com/businesspartner

The new, eight-level course that teaches business English and business skills Business Partner gives students the practical training they need to bridge the gap between the classroom and the world of work. It helps learners to make measurable progress in learning English while helping to make them more employable. Business Partner does not assume any knowledge of the workplace, and is designed for students with no work experience. It also provides many suggestions and alternative ways to use the material for those students already in work. Each level is written to a syllabus based on the Global Scale of English Learning Objectives for Professional English to help learners evaluate their progress. Find out more at english.com/businesspartner

The new, eight-level course that teaches business English and business skills Business Partner gives students the practical training they need to bridge the gap between the classroom and the world of work. It helps learners to make measurable progress in learning English while helping to make them more employable. Business Partner does not assume any knowledge of the workplace, and is designed for students with no work experience. It also provides many suggestions and alternative ways to use the material for those students already in work. Each level is written to a syllabus based on the Global Scale of English Learning Objectives for Professional English to help learners evaluate their progress. Find out more at english.com/businesspartner

Jack the Ripper is not the only blood-soaked fiend at work in London. There are others.In the festering alleys of Whitechapel, a habitual murderer is at work slashing women of the night to death and mutilating their remains.The body count rises, and gory descriptions of the victims' wounds are published in the penny papers, illustrated with images drawn as much from the artists' imaginations as from witness testimony. The vaunted Scotland Yard sleuths are helpless, and the murderer sends them taunting messages in blood red letters signed Saucy Jack.And what of Sherlock Holmes? Is the foremost private consulting detective in the world standing aloof as the capital of the Empire is paralysed by the nameless terror stalking its streets? Here, for the first time, is my account of those dreadful days and nights in that blood-soaked autumn of 1888. John H Watson MD.

Rome 475 ADThe once glorious, but now mouldering Eternal City, officially Christian for a century or more, is in turmoil. Ancient buildings and monuments are being smashed and wealthy citizens attacked by an anarchist group who aim to do away with the Pope and the gaudy trappings of the Church and return Christianity to its humble, radical roots.Romulus Augustus, thirteen-year-old son of Orestes, the general defending Rome against the barbarians pressing across the Rhine, is visiting Rome with his uncle, Paul and his tutor Magnus. Without warning, Romulus finds himself trapped in a web of conspiracies and assassination plots that could trigger a civil war and the fall of the Empire.

Did Ensign the Hon. Ian Lewin, 112th Foot, deliberately allow the French to capture his regiment's flag? A seventy-year-old cold case of cowardice in the face of the enemy leads Holmes to France on the trail of the missing Waterloo colour. Five traditional stories narrated by Doctor Watson and with an occasional wry twist. In Angelique, Holmes is incapacitated by fever and he requires his fellow lodger Doctor Watson to act as his sleuthhound in a missing persons case. Watson is constrained by Holmes to procure "raw facts, my dear fellow. Do not expend your energy in analysis: leave that to me."Watson's investigation uncovers two separate, competing conspiracies, with each conspirator competing for the destruction of the other. The Waterloo Colour sees Holmes investigating a seventy-year-old mystery that has spawned at least one duel and has had two families at each others' throats for a generation. The story of the Benevolent and Virtuous Order of the Swamp Python sees a Chinese secret society attempt to establish itself in South London and Holmes' use of the most modern technology to thwart them. In the Abominable Madame Ricoletti, the escape of a patient from the lunatic asylum at Broadmoor puts Holmes, Watson and Lestrade at terrible risk. In 'Amity Among Nations', Holmes must find the source of a leak of diplomatic secrets that might be a catalyst for war between The United Kingdom and the United States.

The apparent murder of a boy by village bullies leads to the uncovering of a dastardly plot against the Royal Navy. Only Sherlock Holmes, Watson and a motley band of music hall artistes stand between England and invasion by a Foreign Power Traditional short stories told by Doctor Watson with perhaps a wry twist. The strongman in a music hall act disappears with a lady of the chorus, leading to a murder investigation that uncovers a plot to compromise of Britain's naval supremacy and leave her ships helpless in the face of her enemies. The denouement of the case takes place on the Thames and involves the cast of the Hammersmith Temple of Varieties battling sinister agents of a foreign power. A safe is blown at a jeweller's in the City. Suspicion falls on a professional yeggman or safecracker, but is all as it seems? A British officer escapes from captivity by Burmese bandits and Holmes is called in to establish his bona fides. Is he who he purports to be, or an imposter coveting the family title and estates. Jabez Wilson's pawnbroker's shop, the scene of the case of the Redheaded League, may be at the centre of another conspiracy. Doctor Watson is forced to operate at gunpoint on a wounded thief while Holmes follows slender clues to rescue him. Lastly, the composer of a popular jingle fears his work is being copied, but who is the true composer of the song?

What if the most celebrated consulting detective in the world, at the height of his powers in 1897, was put on the trail of the Crown of Scotland? What if the most potent symbol of Scottish sovereignty was stolen, members of the British Royal Family abducted, threats made against the Queen and a campaign of terror planned by separatists aided by a Great Power? Holmes and Watson track a conspiracy against the Union by some of the highest in the land that might lead to a war of cataclysmic proportions.

Is Lady Margaret of Hutton Hall in Surrey being slow- poisoned, as the evidence seems to suggest? Or is an even more convoluted and murderous plot being hatched in which Sherlock Holmes is an unwitting confederate? Christmas at Hutton Hall is marred by tragedy as Holmes pits his wits not only against a criminal conspiracy, but against wily Inspector Baynes of the Surrey Constabulary. In the short story, The Tranquillity of the Morning, an officer recently returned from the war in Upper Burma seeks Holmes' help in removing an evil force from his home before it destroys his father's valuable blue-and-white china collection. Is the Jade Dragon King of the Eastern Sea disturbing the tranquillity of the morning or is a human agency at work? In the second novella, the theft of a certain intimate objet de chambre from under Holmes' bed may have consequences of serious, even European moment. If certain exalted persons were confronted with objects belonging to the other, armies would mobilise and Europe would be plunged into the flames of war.

Two baronets die at the Savoy Theatre under mysterious circumstances during a production of 'Patience', Gilbert and Sullivan's opera about bad baronets. Coincidence, or is an evil agency at play determined to make a hat trick of blue-blooded deaths? Holmes is challenged to a duel by an unlikely antagonist and arrested for murder but arraigned on another, more embarrassing, charge. Holmes and Watson investigate the strange case of the Queen, Prince Albert and John Brown at Windsor Castle and that of a young heiress about to appear in The Mikado who disappears from her private school. What cultural icons personify the Victorian era better than Holmes and Watson and Gilbert and Sullivan? They would very probably have known each other. Holmes was a music lover and Gilbert was quarrelsome and litigious enough to need investigative help. Directly, and indirectly through the music of the operettas, the worlds of the Savoy Theatre and 221b Baker Street meet in these stories.

Young Winston Churchill, aged thirteen, is the cadet section of the Sherlock Holmes detective agency. He spends his Christmas holidays assisting Holmes and Watson in solving the case of the missing Apostles' papers, exposing the mad doctor of Hammersmith and tracking the 'Giant Moles' of Paradol Hall to their criminal lair in Herefordshire. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson met young Winston Churchill in the spring of 1887, and since then the boy has been a frequent visitor to 221b Baker Street. With his mother and father away on a European tour over the Christmas holidays, Winston and his younger brother, Jack, are left in London, in the care of their nanny.

The Queen's spymasters in the newly created Special (Secret) Branch of Scotland Yard inform the Prime Minister that Her Majesty is at grave risk of assassination during the Jubilee procession to Westminster Abbey. Blood-oath Irish Republican fanatics have vowed to kill the Queen and her family using Dynamite bombs of terrible potency. In this second book in the Sherlock Holmes and Young Winston series, Holmes and his companions Doctor Watson and Winston Churchill are called in not only to prevent a Dynamite outrage against the Queen, but to avert a catastrophic war that might bring down the Empire. But is all as it seems, or is one of Holmes' clients using him in a plot to disgrace the other?

Mikey Cleary is a bright boy from a working class, Anglo-Irish family who lives in a confusion of worlds, each with its own senseless rules and bizarre inhabitants.Why does police sergeant 'Killer' Wells chase Jim the Bookie and never catch him? Why won't Mikey's father talk about the War? The streets around Mikey's house were flattened by the German bombers just twenty years before and everyone is obsessed with the War, but Mikey's dad won't talk about it; he won't even tell his son how he won his gold medal.Hamlet & Me is a darkly comic story in which young Mikey faces crises at home, at his new school and at the Old Vic theatre where Peter O'Toole is playing a reluctant Hamlet under the irascible direction of Laurence Olivier. The novel is set in London in October 1963, during a week in which Mikey's granny dies, the National Theatre is born and Mikey learns important lessons in tolerance, understanding and loyalty from the characters he meets in the streets surrounding his home, the local street market and the theatre.Mikey's encounters with his friends and neighbours and with the actors at the Old Vic shape his growing understanding of his world.