Tales for a Winter's Night

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This work brings together eight Arthur Conan Doyle mystery classics. When first gathered into one volume in 1908, the book was entitled Round the Fire Stories, since the author recommended that they be read ideally "'round the fire upon a winter's night." According to Barzun & Taylor in A Catalogue of Crime, "As one reads 'The Man with the Watches,' 'The Lost Special,' 'The Jew's Breastplate,' 'The Black Doctor' and the rest, one marvels again at Doyle's natural gift of storytelling and one relishes his ingrained habit of giving clues, even when they serve narrative and are not to be used for ratiocination. These stories are worth reading even around a radiator."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Release date: May 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9780897338912

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. Before starting his writing career, Doyle attended medical school, where he met the professor who would later inspire his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. A Study in Scarlet was Doyle's first novel; he would go on to write more than sixty stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. He died in England in 1930.

Reviews for Tales for a Winter's Night

[seasonsoflove_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was such a treat! I love Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes' stories, and it was a lot of fun to get to read some of his other mysteries. These short stories have a similar flare to the Holmes' stories, with tricky cases that seem to have no solution, until Doyle spins one. I definitely recommend this one for mystery and Holmes lovers alike.

[pghdragonman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Elementary, my dear Watson, Doyle had to perfect his craft before I came along!These are the early detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle before he introduced Sherlock Holmes. Despite the lack of Holmes, you will not be disappointed. These stories bear the markings of what will later become perhaps the best known detective fiction. Careful readers will also note a prototype, or since this is literature, should I say archtype, of Holmes making a brief anonymous appearance.The style is very dated and stilted by today's standards, yet the text reads very fluently and the reader is still captivated.