Showing results by publisher "Saga Egmont" in Mystery

Can a man lose his mind because of a braid of hair? Can people come back from the dead? "The Head of Hair" tells the story of one poor man who gets so obsessed with a hairpiece that he comes to believe that the lady it belonged to has returned from the underworld. Nobody believes him and he ends up in an institution for mentally ill but could he have been telling the truth? Did he really get a visitor from the past? B. J. Harrison started his Classic Tales Podcast back in 2007, wanting to breathe new life into classic stories.

Sherlock Holmes is still a student when he receives his very first case. While still in college, he is invited to the house of his good friend, Victor Trevor. There he meets Trevor’s father, who challenges Holmes to analyze him, so that he can test the young detective’s investigative skills. Holmes touches a nerve after mentioning a person with the initials "J.A.". After the shock passes, Trevor’s father tries to hide how terrified he is, but Holmes can still catch the anxiety in his eyes.

One night during his regular rambles, Mérimée stumbles upon a mysterious woman who invites him home to her place. They enter a big, dark but luxuriously furnished room and they spend the whole night having dinner and talking. However things take a turn to the strange when the eery lady starts talking about death and tombs. Mérimée realises that his companion is not an ordinary woman and that he is in danger. Will he get himself out of there alive or will Xélucha drag him with her to the underworld? B. J.

Sam McGee is one of the many gold miners of the Klondike Gold Rush. The freezing-cold and harsh winter of Yukon is about to take his next victim in the face of McGee. The poor man freezes to death on the trail. The night before he passed away, McGee had asked his friend, the narrator of the story, to cremate his remains, saying that he did not want to be buried in the frozen ground. However, after the man is cremated some strange things begin to happen.

Jim Hawkins is a young boy who lives at his parents’ inn, near Bristol. After Billy Bones, an old sea captain, mysteriously dies at the inn, Hawkins unlocks his sea chest and finds a treasure map. The mysterious treasure map arouses Jim’s curiosity and sparks a wild and adventurous treasure hunt. Before long, Jim has gathered a crew of untrustworthy pirates and sails off to Treasure Island. Long John Silver with his missing leg and his parrot is part of the voyage.

Aristide Valentin holds a dinner party in his secret garden, which only has one main entrance. Many people are invited. Julius K. Brayne, one of Valentin’s rivals, is of the party as well. Everything goes as planned until one group of guests finds a beheaded corpse and the dinner turns into an investigation. Many questions begin to arise: How could someone be killed in a closed back garden without anyone noticing? Who is the victim? Who is the murderer? Where is the head? Find out the answers in "The Secret Garden". B. J.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are discussing the lack of interesting new cases when a man bursts into the room. The panicked young man is McFarlane and he believes that he will be arrested for the murder of 52-year-old Jonas Oldacre. Oldacre’s burnt remains are found behind McFarlane house, the day after the builder Oldacre came to the lawyer McFarlane to draw up his will and made him his sole beneficiary. McFarlane is arrested as the main suspect. Holmes believes that the young man is not guilty and does his best to prove it.

Lieutenant-General von Rabbek is a local aristocrat, who invites the officers of the Reserve Artillery Brigade to a cup of tea with brandy. Of all the guests, Ryabovitch is the most unpleasant one. While doing his best to avoid talking to people, Ryabovitch enters a dark room, where he an unknown woman surprises him by kissing him, then running away. The unexpected kiss awakes Ryabovitch's curiosity and passion, and the man spends the rest of the evening searching for the mysterious woman.

Hilton Cubitt visits Sherlock Holmes to show him a sheet of paper with a weird sequence of drawn figures. When these odd messages began to arrive at Cubitt’s house, fear and panic overwhelmed his wife Elsie. She is afraid her past is catching up with her, but she refuses to reveal anything about it. Holmes is tasked with decipher the messages and find out who is sending them.

Ralph Orth is an American novelist who decides to move to the English countryside. There he buys a marvellous estate called Chillingsworth. Inside Chillingsworth’s gallery, Orth finds an old portrait of a young girl who takes Orth’s breath away. He is fascinated and is determined to find out who this girl was. His obsession with little lady Blanche gets so strong that one day he sees her walking around in the neighborhood.

Ali Baba and Cassim are two Persian brothers. Ali Baba barely manages to put food on the table for his family, while his brother lives an easy life thanks to his rich wife. One day, while chopping wood in the forest, Ali Baba sees a band of thieves laden with treasures approaching. They stop in front of a rock and the captain shouts "Open Sesame!". What happens next is pure magic. The giant rock moves to the sides and opens a portal which the thieves enter.

Lionel Dacre is a young man who lives in a small house in Paris. Because of his large interest in the occult, Dacre has gathered a huge library of occult literature and many mysterious items. One of these items is a leather funnel next to which the young man sleeps. The strange thing is that in his dreams, Lionel can see exactly how the funnel has been used.

The three scientist Mr. Edward Malone, Mr. Peerless Jones and Professor Challenger come together to build a machine that can drill deep into the earth. When the machine’s construction is finally completed the drilling starts, and it will not stop until the earth’s mantle is reached. Everything goes well for the three men, until they reach something into the earth that threatens to destroy their excavation.

Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan are two scruffy adventurers who are planning to conquer Kafiristan - a remote part of Afghanistan. The two men pretend to have signed a contract that neither of them will touch alcohol or women. However, disguised as a priest and his assistant, Dravot and Carnehan depart for Kafiristan, secretly carrying twenty riffles. Why do they want to conquer Kafiristan? Will the make it across the border alive? Find all the answers in Rudyard Kipling’s adventure story "The Man Who Would Be King" from 1888. B. J.

The narrator is under the spell of Ellis - a female vampire - who takes him on series of flights to different places, such as Paris, St. Petersburg and the Isle of Wight. At these places, he becomes a witness to various incidents and becomes involves in different situations. Why was the narrator cursed by Ellis? Why did she take him to those places and what did she wanted to show him? What will the narrator learn from their journey? How will the story end? Find all the answers in Turgenev’s story "Phantoms" from 1863. B. J.

Helen Stoner goes to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. She is afraid that her stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, may be trying to kill her. Helen’s sister died mysteriously two years earlier, right before her own wedding. Her last words, which Helen never managed to decipher were "The speckled band". Dr. Roylott’s best friends are a band of gypsies. He also owns two dangerous animals, a cheetah and a baboon, as pets. He simply scares people, and everyone avoids him.

While hosting a party, a banker makes a bet with one of his guests, who is a lawyer. The topic of the bet is capital punishment and whether it is worse or better than a life sentence. The banker sees the capital punishment as more humane than life imprisonment, whilst the young lawyer completely disagrees. The bet is as follows: if the lawyer spends fifteen years in complete isolation, the banker will give him two million rubles. As the years pass, the banker realizes that he will go bankrupt if he loses the bet.

"The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" is Sir Conan Doyle’s second collection about the great detective. In this collection we meet the same two protagonists, namely Holmes and Watson, but the cases and mysteries that must be solved are completely new. The disappearance of a champion horse, a dead coachman and stolen naval treaty are only a small portion of all the mysteries the two men will have to deal with.

One day a poor fisherman finds a large and heavy chest. Caliph Harun al-Rashid buys the chest, thinking that it encloses a treasure. Instead, he finds out that it contains a woman’s corpse sliced into pieces. Following this discovery, the caliph orders his vizier Ja’far, to find the murderer within three years, otherwise he will be executed. Unfortunately, due to the lack of evidence, the vizier is not able to make a proper investigation and the fatal day looms closer.

Rachel Innes is a rich lady who has been taking care of her niece and nephew since their father died. The three of them decide to rent a house in the country and although everything seems to be alright in the beginning, strange events soon begin to occur. Her niece disappears then reappears a few days later. There is a murder they are involved in. They hear strange noises. Things fall down the stairs in the middle of the night. Will Rachel solve the mysteries and how will their summer end? Find out in "The Circular Staircase". B. J.