The Hound of the Baskervilles - by Arthur Conan Doyle (Paperback)

About the Book

The recent death of Sir Charles Baskerville stirs up a dangerous business. For the "luminous, ghastly, and spectral" hound of the family legend has been seen roaming the moors at night, and it appears that the new baronet has inherited, along with the ancient house and vast wealth of his family, a dreadful destiny. . . .

Book Synopsis

Holmes and Watson are faced with their most terrifying case yet. The legend of the devil-beast that haunts the moors around the Baskerville family's home warns the descendants of that ancient clan never to venture out "in those dark hours when the power of evil is exalted." Now, the most recent Baskerville, Sir Charles, is dead, and the footprints of a giant hound have been found near his body. Will the new heir meet the same fate?

Review Quotes

"The whole Sherlock Holmes saga is a triumphant illustration of art's supremacy over life." --Christopher Morley

About the Author

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. After nine years in Jesuit schools, he went to Edinburgh University, receiving a degree in medicine in 1881. He then became an eye specialist in Southsea, with a distressing lack of success. Hoping to augment his income, he wrote his first story, A Study in Scarlet. His detective, Sherlock Holmes, was modeled in part after Dr. Joseph Bell of the Edinburgh Infirmary, a man with spectacular powers of observation, analysis, and inference. Conan Doyle may have been influenced also by his admiration for the neat plots of Gaboriau and for Poe's detective, M. Dupin. After several rejections, the story was sold to a British publisher for £25, and thus was born the world's best-known and most-loved fictional detective. Fifty-nine more Sherlock Holmes adventures followed. Once, wearying of Holmes, his creator killed him off, but was forced by popular demand to resurrect him. Sir Arthur--he had been knighted for this defense of the British cause in his The Great Boer War--became an ardent Spiritualist after the death of his son Kingsley, who had been wounded at the Somme in World War I. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in Sussex in 1930.