Becoming bored with family life, Mary Russell follows Sherlock Holmes to London, where she meets a former Oxford classmate and becomes involved in a mystery that places her in a collaboration with Holmes.

In 1919, Sherlock Holmes and his future wife Mary Russell are smuggled into Palestine under cover of darkness. Disguised as Arabs they foil a Turkish plot to regain control of Jerusalem from the British.

Chance meeting with a Sussex beekeeper turns into a pivotal, personal transformation when fifteen-year-old Mary Russell discovers that the beekeeper is the reclusive, retired detective Sherlock Holmes, who soon takes on the role of mentor and teacher.

Mary Russell is used to dark secrets--her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. But what of the other person to whom she has opened her heart: the couple's longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson? Russell's faith and affection are suddenly shattered when a man arrives on the doorstep claiming to be Mrs. Hudson's son. And though what he tells Russell cannot possibly be true, she believes him--as surely as she believes the threat...

"It is a normal afternoon in Sussex when Russell and Holmes return home to find a peculiar addition to their garden: a beautiful stone that once occupied the Imperial gardens in Kyoto. The stone immediately recalls the spring of 1924, when, on their way back from India (The Game), Russell and Holmes agreed to perform a small but exceedingly dangerous job for the emperor of Japan. At the time, Russell encountered a young Japanese woman on board their...

"A queen, a castle, a dark and ageless threat--all await Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes in this chilling new adventure. The queen is Marie of Roumania: the doubly royal granddaughter to Victoria, Empress of the British Empire, and Alexander II, Tsar of Russia. A famous beauty who was married at seventeen into Roumania's young dynasty, Marie had beguiled the Paris Peace Conference into returning her adopted country's long-lost provinces, single-handedly...