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"A coppertop steam engine has disappeared," explains a train boiler inspector as he visits Sherlock Holmes at 221B, "and not by the whim of drunken youths." Something sinister is afoot, and Holmes learns as he takes on the mystery that criminals have designs upon using the locomotive for purposes never imagined by its designers.

Death at the Excelsior is the first, and only, PI mystery P.G. Wodehouse wrote. This comprehensive story from Wodehouse is a perfect introduction to his unique style.

Tall, gangling schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, both educated and highly superstitious, comes to live and teach in the quiet, rural town known as Sleepy Hollow in the Catskill Mountains of New York. There, he falls in love with the daughter of wealthy Farmer Van Tassel. But he must compete with the much admired, waggish ruffian Brom Bones, whom he encounters - with absolute terror and belief - in the guise of the much storied and feared specter... The Headless Horseman.

An ancient Egyptian mummy comes to life, but not to chase anyone around a tomb. This is a science fiction story, not a tale of horror. If you look carefully, you'll find a little sarcastic humor here and there. The mummy has a story of his own to tell, and it's quite an interesting one, to say the least. Another example of Poe's fantastic imagination.

"A Descent Into The Maelstrom" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that first appeared in the May 1841 edition of Graham's Magazine. In the tale, a man recounts how he survived a shipwreck and a whirlpool. It has been grouped with Poe's tales of ratiocination and also labeled an early form of science fiction.

Holmes' search for Neville St. Clair has lead him to the opium dens of Upper Swandam Lane, where the 'disappearance' of many souls in this vile alley is a sobering fact of life. Not simply those whose lives are consumed and cast into perdition by the drug, but sudden, violent exits from the mortal plane at the hands of others. St. Clair's distraught wife has seen him here in one of the dens, but he has vanished just as suddenly. Police have found his clothes and bloodstains upon an open windowsill.

Sir James Damery calls upon Sherlock Holmes, representing an exalted client who wishes his identity protected. Holmes' mission is to break up an engagement between Violet De Merville, the daughter of a prominent citizen, and her rakish fiancee, by exposing his true scoundrel character to her.

While spending the night in an eerie, decrepit, old bungalow in late 19th-century India, the narrator tells how he begins to hear the unmistakable sounds of a billiard game in the locked adjoining room. It's a room that was once a billiard-room where one of the sahibs is said to have died in the midst of a game... and is believed to have become a ghost.

The narrator in this story vows revenge upon a man named Fortunato. He takes advantage of Fortunato's ego and lures him down into the recesses of an underground vault to taste a rare wine, a cask of Amontillado.

Young John McFarland is accused of the violent murder of a man who has just left all his worldly goods to the accused in his will. The evidence against the great detective’s client mounts and Holmes candidly admits to Watson that, perhaps, the case Lestrade is building is as sound as Holmes believes it is untrue.

Dr. Watson's introduction to this Holmes case among the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, entitled "The Adventure of Silver Blaze" ( Strand magazine, December 1892) is succinct and impossible to improve upon: "There was but one problem before the public which could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular disappearance of the favourite for the Wessex Cup, and the tragic murder of its trainer."

Aristide Valentin, the chief of the Paris police, arrives from Holland by boat at the English port of Harwich. He is pursuing an infamous thief and con man named Flambeau, to whom Parisian reporters attribute numerous mysterious and unsolved crimes committed in the French capital.

Dr. Aloysius Lana, a "Black Doctor" of Spanish ancestry, has settled in a Lancashire town and courted Miss Frances Morton, a young woman of the local gentry. After he unexpectedly breaks off their engagement, he is found dead, and Frances' brother is arrested.

In this brief yet eloquent story, the writer recounts his trip from Europe to California visit to an old friend, during which he hears a tapping on the wall to an adjoining apartment. With regret, his friend tells the story of his coldhearted, selfish denial of his love for a young lady.

A man touring Mammoth Cave separates from his guide and becomes lost. His torch expires and he is giving up hope of finding a way out in the pitch dark, when he hears strange non-human footsteps approaching him. Thinking it to be a lost mountain lion or other such beast, he picks up a stone and throws it toward the source of the sound. The beast is hit and crumples to the floor. The guide finds the protagonist back, and together they examine the fallen creature with the guide's torchlight.

Edgar Allan Poe's horrific short story is the account of a man's irreversible journey into madness as he awaits his execution by hanging the next morning. Fueled by bouts of alcoholism and what seems an inborn fatal streak of madness, his manic extremes of violence and guilt demand attacks upon the innocent to alay his own self-hatred.

When you find yourself in need of a few laughs, you can't go wrong with P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. "The Metropolitan Touch" delivers plenty of smiles, if not outright laughs. Bertie Wooster, our narrator, becomes entangled once again with the love life of his chum Bingo Little. Bingo has left the London high life for village England where he's found the girl of his dreams again. The trouble is that she has more and more suitors every week and has expressed little interest in Bingo.

Watson joins Holmes late one night as the detective takes on the case of an army officer who has died an apparently violent death. He is found in a pool of blood, his head savagely struck during an argument with his wife, who is now incapacitated by the traumatic event. Yet there is evidence that suggests the presence of a third party in the locked room - and even a strange, curtain-climbing animal of unknown origins.

"A curious experience? said the Doctor. Yes, my friends, I have had one very curious experience. I never expect to have another, for it is against all doctrines of chances that two such events would befall any one man in a single lifetime. You may believe me or not, but the thing happened exactly as I tell it." The opening lines of Arthur Conan Doyle's story "The Beetle Hunter" promise much and deliver as only Doyle can do.

One Voice Recordings presents stories by H. L. Peretz. This production of five of his best tales includes Beryl The Tailor, Devotion Without End, The Visit of the Magician, The Poor Boy, and Travel Pictures from 'Pictures of a Provincial Journey'.