This was the very first Sherlock Holmes book ever published. The characters are still taking shape in this first tale, but it was essential to set up the the stories which were to follow. In it, we learn how Holmes and Watson came to meet and work together, and are introduced to Holmes’ idiosyncratic and ingenious ways.

The story attracted little public interest when it first appeared in Beeton’s 1887 Christmas Annual. Only 11 complete copies of the magazine are now known to exist and they have considerable value. A Study in Scarlet was published in book form in 1888 and is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon of stories.

The second Sherlock Holmes novel explains how Watson came to be married: a key point in the relationship between the two men. Watson as the domesticated man is a stark contrast to Holmes’ independent and disconnected nature, a theme central to many of the Conan Doyle stories.

A detective story about double-crossing, betrayal and greed, The Sign of the Four is superbly constructed and compelling, complete with poison darts, a disputed legacy, and an exciting chase down the River Thames. There have been at least 14 film, TV and play adaptations of this book.

By the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote this story, the popularity of Sherlock Holmes was well established. Set at Christmas, this remains one of his most well-liked and memorable investigations, containing more humour than many of the other stories.

The plot begins with Holmes trying to return a hat and a goose lost by someone on Christmas Day, but then evolves into a more noteworthy case – the theft of a precious stone, the Blue Carbuncle. Set in the heart of London, our heroes end up romping through Covent Garden and all the way to Brixton in order to solve the case of the missing jewel.

This story was one of the 12 stories that made up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collection and is considered one of the most innovative.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band is what is known as a ‘locked-room mystery’ – one in which a murder has been committed in a way that, at first viewing, appears to make no logical sense, and a crime scene  with no indication as to how the culprit could have entered or left.

Not only is this a firm fan-favourite, Conan Doyle himself even declared it the finest Holmes story in a list of his favourites he published in The Strand Magazine in 1927, three years before his death.

One of 12 stories collected together in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, this is another very popular short story. It is distinguished by its atmospheric Dartmoor setting and late-Victorian sporting environment, with an inventive twist at its conclusion.

The plot focuses on the disappearance of the eponymous racehorse on the eve of an important race and on the apparent murder of its trainer. It features some of Conan Doyle’s most effective plotting, hingeing on one of the greatest and well-known pieces of dialogue in all of the stories: ‘The curious incident of the dog in the night-time’.

Image: A Sidney Paget illustration for The Adventure of Silver Blaze, which appeared in The Strand Magazine in December 1892 with the caption “HOLMES GAVE ME A SKETCH OF THE EVENTS.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had intended this to be the 24th and final Sherlock Holmes story. It introduces Holmes to his arch-enemy: the criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty, the world’s first true supervillain, and sees both men reportedly fall to their deaths from a Swiss waterfall, The Reichenbach Falls.

Conan Doyle had tired of his famous detective and viewed him as a distraction from more serious literary efforts, so decided to kill him off in what he thought was a final act of glory. The public outcry however, was so great that The Strand Magazine lost 20,000 subscribers overnight, and friends and family pressured him to bring the detective back.

It would be nine years before Conan Doyle relented and returned with the classic Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1902.

This story also made it into Doyle’s own list of his favourite Sherlock Holmes stories because he thought it was the story in which “on the whole, Holmes himself shows perhaps the most ingenuity”.

The case introduces international scope to the work of Sherlock Holmes. Where previous cases had seen him work primarily in London and the home counties, this sees the detective return from the continent, after a case that had taken him to three countries.

Holmes ends up in Surrey, supposedly to recuperate, but instead finds a case to solve. Whilst there is no complex detective work undertaken, the story does manage once again to show the superiority of Sherlock Holmes over the run of the mill policemen.

The third of four novel-length Holmes stories marked the detective’s return after Conan Doyle had retired the character nine years earlier. It is Holmes’ most iconic case, and considered one of the greatest novels ever written.

The events in the book take place before The Final Problem, and revolve around a supposed curse placed on the Baskerville family involving the legend of a supernatural beast. The sinister events take place on the fog-shrouded moorland of the family’s estate and engages the reader with its eerie, haunting atmosphere from the start.

The success of The Hound of the Baskervilles led Conan Doyle to eventually bring the character back from the dead in his next book and revive the series.

Published in the October 1903 edition of The Strand Magazine, virtually 10 years after The Final Problem, this is the story that effectively resurrects Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle explains how Holmes survived his apparent death at The Reichenbach Falls, and also gives him a case to solve: the death of Ronald Adair, a man shot inside a locked room. Much of the story explains everything that has happened to the detective since Watson last saw him – three years in their fictional world.

The story was the 25th of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories ultimately written. In 1905, it was included within the compilation book The Return of Sherlock Holmes.