Best Arthur Conan Doyle Books
Arthur Conan Doyle didn't invent the detective story, but he perfected it. Sherlock Holmes — first introduced in A Study in Scarlet and brought to his gothic peak in The Hound of the Baskervilles — remains the template against which every fictional detective is still measured. Doyle's prose is brisk and atmospheric, his mysteries built on deductive logic so precisely laid out that the solutions feel both inevitable and surprising. What's often underappreciated is the range: beyond Holmes, Doyle wrote genuinely unsettling horror, and his Vampire Stories show a darker, more visceral imagination at work. Holmes himself is a creation of almost mythological staying power — cold, brilliant, deeply strange — and readers who love a detective with a genuine inner life keep coming back. For anyone who wants their mysteries intelligent and their atmosphere thick, Doyle is the original.
Where to Start with Arthur Conan Doyle
- Best entry point → The complete Sherlock Holmes
- Best standalone → Sherlock
- Start the Sherlock Holmes series → Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection
- What readers keep coming back to → A Study in Scarlet
- Highest rated by readers → The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes #4)
Best Arthur Conan Doyle Books
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Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection
Sherlock Holmes • Book 1
by Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen Fry - introductions
★ 4.51 Goodreads (217.9K ratings) - 2
The complete Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes #1-9
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The definitive collection of detective fiction follows Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson through four novels and fifty-six short stories of deductive brilliance. Doyle created the template for analytical detection that every mystery writer since has built upon.
★ 4.51 Goodreads (217.8K ratings) - 3
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes • Book 4
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This collection showcases Holmes at his analytical peak, tackling cases that range from seemingly impossible murders to elaborate schemes spanning decades. Conan Doyle demonstrates why the detective's methods became legendary.
★ 4.29 Goodreads (106.3K ratings) - 4
A Study in Scarlet
Sherlock Holmes • Book 1
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Holmes and Watson's initial meeting launches into a murder investigation spanning London and the Mormon frontier. Conan Doyle's origin story shows how the legendary partnership began.
★ 4.13 Goodreads (499.1K ratings) - 5
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Sherlock Holmes • Book 5
by Arthur Conan Doyle, Akash Chauhan
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A supernatural hound supposedly kills the Baskerville heir on the fog-shrouded Devon moors. Doyle's most famous Holmes case perfectly balances gothic atmosphere with logical deduction.
★ 4.14 Goodreads (392.2K ratings) - 6
The Valley of Fear
Sherlock Holmes • Book 7
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Holmes investigates a country house murder that connects to Pennsylvania coal mining and secret societies, revealing how American violence reaches across the Atlantic.
★ 3.96 Goodreads (56.2K ratings) - 7
Sherlock
by Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat
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Handpicked by the BBC Sherlock creators, these nineteen tales trace Holmes from his debut in A Study in Scarlet to late classics like The Dying Detective, offering the essential canon that shaped television's most famous consulting detective.
★ 4.33 Goodreads (457 ratings) - 8
Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal in Bohemia (The Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Book 4)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Book 1
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Holmes faces his most memorable adversary in Irene Adler, the only person to ever best the consulting detective. Conan Doyle crafts a perfect introduction to a character who haunts Holmes throughout the canon.
★ 3.83 Goodreads (12.7K ratings) - 9
The Man with the Twisted Lip - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Book 6
by Arthur Conan Doyle, Edward Raleigh
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A visit to London's underworld opium dens becomes a baffling case when Holmes investigates murder while Watson searches for a friend's missing husband.
★ 3.81 Goodreads (7.3K ratings) - 10
Sherlock Holmes Investigates: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Sherlock Holmes • Book 5
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Holmes faces his most atmospheric case when ancient curses and hellish hounds terrorize the Baskerville family on fog-shrouded English moors.
★ 3.95 Goodreads (63 ratings) - 11
Fangs
Vampire Archives • Book 2
by Otto Penzler, Kim Newman, Clive Barker, Anne Rice, Arthur Conan Doyle, Erik Davies
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Classic vampire anthology spans from Clive Barker's visceral horror to Arthur Conan Doyle's Victorian mysteries, exploring centuries of bloodthirsty folklore.
★ 3.78 Goodreads (160 ratings) - 12
The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories (The Connoisseur's Collections)
by Michael Sims, Elizabeth Gaskell, Amelia B. Edwards, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Robert W. Chambers, Mrs. Oliphant, W.W. Jacobs, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Rudyard Kipling, Ambrose Bierce, W.F. Harvey
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Victorian ghost stories possess an unmatched atmospheric darkness that modern horror rarely achieves. This collection gathers the best spectral tales from Dickens, Kipling, and other masters.
★ 3.73 Goodreads (295 ratings) - 13
H. P. Lovecraft's Book of the Supernatural
by Stephen Jones, Henry James, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Conan Doyle, Davina Porter, Steven Crossley, Bronson Pinchot
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Lovecraft's essential 1927 essay 'Supernatural Horror in Literature' guides readers through the genre's evolution, accompanied by the finest stories he celebrated. Classic anthology spanning from Edgar Allan Poe through contemporary British and American masters.
★ 3.68 Goodreads (339 ratings) - 14
Vampire Stories
by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Eighteen-Bisang, Martin H. Greenberg
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The Sherlock Holmes creator explores vampire fiction through bloodsucking plants and murderous wives in these Gothic tales. Conan Doyle, writing as Bram Stoker's contemporary, revels in supernatural horror from murder mysteries to botanical nightmares.
★ 3.55 Goodreads (492 ratings)