OBSERVATIONS BY GASLIGHT is a thrilling volume of both new and previously published short stories and novellas narrated by those who knew the Great Detective, Sherlock Holmes. Beloved adventuress Irene Adler teams up with her former adversary in a near-deadly inquiry into a room full of eerily stopped grandfather clocks. Learn of the case that cemented the lasting friendship between Holmes and Inspector Lestrade, and of the tragic crime that haunted the Yarder into joining the police force. And witness Stanley Hopkins’ first meeting with the remote logician he idolizes, who one day will become his devoted mentor. 

Ben Dane’s Broadway theater baron father is dead --- but by purpose or by accident? Unable to face alone his mother's ghastly remarriage to his uncle, he turns to his dearest friend, Horatio Patel, whom he hasn't seen since their relationship changed forever from platonic to something...other. Horatio is on the first flight to NYC when he finds himself next to a sly tailor who portends inevitable disaster and seems ominously like an architect of mayhem himself. Meanwhile, Ben's ex-fiancé Lia has been drawn into the fold of three florists from New Orleans --- seemingly ageless sisters who teach her the language of flowers, and whose magical bouquets hold both curses and cures. For a price. On one explosive night these kinetic forces will collide, and the only possible outcome is death.

The year is 1921, and "Nobody" Alice James has just arrived in Oregon with a bullet wound, a lifetime's experience battling the New York Mafia, and $50,000 in illicit cash. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of home and who saves Alice by leading her to the Paragon Hotel. But her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be an all-black hotel in a Jim Crow city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers --- burning crosses, electing officials, infiltrating newspapers and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice and her new Paragon "family" are searching for a missing mulatto child who has mysteriously vanished into the woods. To untangle the web of lies and misdeeds around her, Alice will have to answer for her own past, too.

Lyndsay Faye was introduced to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries when she was 10 years old and her dad suggested she read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.” She immediately became enamored with tales of Holmes and his esteemed biographer, Dr. John Watson. Later, she began spinning these quintessential characters into her own works of fiction. Faye’s best Holmes tales, including two new works, are brought together in THE WHOLE ART OF DETECTION, which spans Holmes’ career --- from self-taught young upstart to publicly lauded detective --- both before and after his faked death over a Swiss waterfall in 1894.

After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre “last confessions” of the recently hanged, orphan Jane Steele thrills at discovering an advertisement. Her aunt has died, and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess. Burning to know if she is in fact the rightful heir, Jane takes the position incognito and learns that Highgate House is full of marvelously strange new residents. As Jane falls in love with Mr. Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: Can she possess him --- body, soul and secrets --- without revealing her own murderous past?

No one in 1840s New York likes fires, but Copper Star Timothy Wilde least of all. So when an arsonist with an agenda begins threatening Alderman Robert Symmes, a corrupt and powerful leader high in the Tammany Hall ranks, Wilde isn’t thrilled to be involved. His reservations escalate further when his brother Valentine announces that he’ll be running against Symmes in the upcoming election, making both himself and Timothy a host of powerful enemies.

Officer Timothy Wilde is horrified when he learns of the gruesome underworld of lies and corruption ruled by the “blackbirders,” who snatch free Northerners of color from their homes, masquerade them as slaves, and sell them South to toil as plantation property. When the beautiful and terrified Lucy Adams staggers into Timothy’s office to report a robbery and is asked what was stolen, her reply is “My family.”

One night, while making his rounds as a reluctant NYPD officer, Timothy Wilde runs into a girl not more than 10 years old dashing through the dark covered head to toe in blood. He takes her home, where she spins wild stories, claiming that dozens of bodies are buried in the forest north of 23rd Street.