At the close of the year 1918, forced to flee England, Sherlock Holmes and his nineteen year old apprentice, Mary Russell, enter British occupied Palestine under the auspices of Holmes enigmatic brother Mycroft. A rash of murders there seems unrelated to the growing tensions among Jew, Moslem and Christian, yet Holmes is adamant he must reconstruct the most recent one in the desert gully where it occurred. Their singular findings will lead him and Russell through labyrinthine bazaars, verminous hovels, cliff-hung monasteries - and into mortal danger...

William Tell Sackett had followed a different path from his younger brothers, but his name, like theirs, was spoken with respect and just a little fear. Where Orrin had brought law and order from New Mexico to the plains of Montana, backed up by the gunfighting talents of his brother Tye, Tell Sackett's destiny drew him to Texas after he had to kill a man. There, in the high, lonesome country, he came upon a vein of pure gold. All he'd wanted was enough to buy a ranch, but he son learned that gold has its own ways with men.