The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his famous detective and illustrated by Sidney Paget. These are the first of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, originally published as single stories in the Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892. The 12 stories in this collection are: A Scandal in Bohemia The Adventure of the Red-Headed League A Case of Identity The Boscombe Valley Mystery The Five Orange Pips The Man with the Twisted Lip The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle The Adventure of the Speckled Band The Adventure of the Engineer s Thumb The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet The Adventure of the Copper Beeches The book was banned in the Soviet Union in 1929 for the occultism of its author, although the book shows few to no signs of such material. Later, the embargo was lifted.Total Running Time (TRT): 10 hours, 53 min. Reading by David Clarke. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels. Sherlock Holmes is a London-based consulting detective whose abilities border on the fantastic, Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to adopt almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve difficult cases. Holmes, who first appeared in publication in 1887, was featured in four novels and 56 short stories. Novels: A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of the Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) and The Valley of Fear (1915). Short stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905), His Last Bow (1917) and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927).