Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) is the celebrated author of many adventure novels, including The Lost World and The Poison Belt, and the creator of the hugely popular detective stories of Sherlock Holmes.

A master of many literary genres, Arthur Conan Doyle excelled particularly in the short-story form, and was acclaimed in his day as much for his detective stories as for his thrilling tales of mystery and the supernatural. While the adventures of Sherlock Holmes have become part of our collective imagination, these stories - concerned with ghosts, obscure scientific experiments and other unexplained phenomena - are now unjustly neglected.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.