A home invasion results in property damage. Children disappear and a disgruntled ex-employee is suspected. Girl visits relative, walks in on scene of carnage. A man searches for days, seeking his lost love. A young woman accuses her father's wife of attempted murder. Dramatic news from CNN? Stories ripped from today's headlines? No, they are cases investigated by Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his intrepid companion and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson. Drawn into the dark underbelly of folk tale reality, Holmes and Watson travel the streets of London and into the far English countryside to discover...

Jewel thefts, missing persons, even murder are all elements in the world of the great detective Sherlock Holmes. What connects the stories in this book is that the cases he and his biographer Dr. John H. Watson investigate are based on adventures beloved of childhood. In a novel twist to the usual Holmes pastiches, Mrs. Puhl has based her plots involving Mr. Sherlock Holmes on folk tales, nursery rhymes and other snippets of children's literature. She has brought them into the Victorian era and kept them true to the expectations for Holmesian stories. But these are not children's tales. There...