At Ebooks Direct: The Adventure of the Lioness’s Mane

It’s 1895, but not as you know it!

The planet Earth experienced its first shattering contact with alien life in the year 1690 AD. Only the inspired genius of Sir Isaac Newton enabled our world to survive the chaos and destruction that followed, and in the subsequent centuries to become part of the interstellar Alliance that protects Earth still.

Due to Newton’s influence, the metropolis of London eventually became the seat of the Terran planetary government, and of the futuristic high-tech culture that rapidly grew and spread worldwide from the seeds of that remarkably altered seventeenth century. But the modern London of 1895 conceals other distinctions far more unusual and (perhaps) more important.

One of Earth’s most valuable resources—and, some say, possibly its most extraordinary secret weapon—resides in an ordinary-looking building in a terrace-street of Marylebone. When the police or the authorities can’t help them, Londoners (and beings from far further afield) bring their problems to 221B Baker Street… seeking the unique assistance of two men of note:

• Mr. Sherlock Holmes: Earth’s only consulting detective, whose dazzlingly incisive intellect and intimate relationship to the cybernetic semi-sentience of London itself together enable him not only to observe what others barely see, but to deduce what others almost never expect.
• Doctor and Captain John Watson: former mobile-suit soldier and surgeon-medic of the Alliance High Guard, and (with Holmes) hero of the recent War of the Irruption; flatmate, advisor, constant companion, and occasional fierce protector of his best friend and invaluable counterpart—the man who years ago saved John’s life while John was saving his.

In this tale (as in many others of their shared adventures) a prominent visitor arrives at 221B with an unsettling narrative. She comes to warn Holmes and Watson of an assassination—her own—even though at the same time she claims that that event might not particularly matter. It falls to the two humans to lay bare the shadowy truths behind the threat against their visitor, and to prevent an assassination that (if it does succeed) will have effects much more far-reaching and severe than the mere death of their client.

The Adventure of the Lioness’s Mane is a 12,000-word novelette and sequel story to the Holmes and Watson novel Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rats of Sumatra III, currently in progress. This story originally appeared in Multiverse of Mystery: A Holmes and Watson Anthology, and is published at Ebooks Direct for the first time in its original longer form.

Get The Adventure of the Lioness’s Mane here!

Attention, UK readers: As you may already know, Ebooks Direct can no longer sell directly into the UK due to bureaucracy associated with Brexit. However, this ebook is temporarily available in a UK-only version via Amazon.co.uk, and a link will shortly be installed at the UK-facing EbooksDirect-Annex.com website.