Irene Adler

Series · 9 books · 1990-2012

By Carole Nelson Douglas

Books in series

Good Night, Mr. Holmes

1990

Winner of the American Mystery Award for Best Novel of Romantic Suspense, and the Romantic Times BookClub Award for Best Historical Mystery Miss Irene Adler, the beautiful American opera singer who once outwitted Sherlock Holmes, is here given an unexpected she is a superb detective, as Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker can attest. Even Holmes himself must admit—albeit grudgingly—that she acquits herself competently. But in matters of the heart she encounters difficulty. The Crown Prince of Bohemia—tall, blonde, and handsome—proves to be a cad. Will dashing barrister Godfrey Norton be able to convince Irene that not all handsome men are cut from the same broadcloth?

Good Morning, Irene

1991

Picking up where Good Night, Mr. Holmes left off, our heroine, Irene, is in Paris lapping up her obituaries, when a drowned sailor emerges from the Seine bearing a strange tattoo... rather like the one on a corpse Irene once saw on Bram Stoker's dining room table.

Irene At Large

1992

Note: Later editions were titled A Soul of Steel. In Douglas' third Irene Adler mystery, Irene observes a stranger in Oriental garb fall poisoned at the feet of Nell Huxliegh, Irene's very proper friend and narrator. Despite his garb, he is an Englishman, and reveals as he recovers that he has returned after years in Afghanistan in order to warn "Dr. Watson" that his life is in danger. The mystery soon leads Irene to 221 B Baker St.

Another Scandal in Bohemia

1994

A novel of suspense featuring Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler Originally titled Irene’s Last Waltz The ever-irresistible Irene Adler, her dashing barrister husband, Godfrey Norton, and the indomitable Miss Nell Huxleigh have arrived at last as their French cottage-having survived dastardly plots, Russian spies, pistol-wielding criminals, and the occasional cobra. The happy trio seeks nothing but rest and peace-but Irene has always chafed under idle conditions, and Paris, she says, "is pretty and urbane, but hardly a center of excitement." So when Charles Frederick Worth, the Parisian king of couture, invites Irene to become his "mannequin de ville," to wear the fabulous worth creations to stimulate his trade, Irene leaps at the chance. But what was a joyous lark soon turns into a journey that can lead to disgrace, dishonor, and death when Irene, Nell, and Godfrey are drawn into a series of events that will compel Irene to the one place that she daren't go and the one man she must not confront-Prague and the King of Bohemia.

Chapel Noir

2001

Before Caleb Carr and Laurie R. King, Carole Nelson Douglas gave readers a compelling look into Victoriana with a bold new detective Irene Adler, the only woman to ever outwit Sherlock Holmes. An operatic diva and the intellectual equal of most of the men she encounters, Irene is as much at home with disguises and a revolver as with high society and haute couture. Chapel Noir is the fifth book in Carole Nelson Douglas' critically acclaimed Irene Adler series, which reinvents "the woman" that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced in "A Scandal in Bohemia" as the heroine of her own extravagant adventures. This time readers are thrust into one of the darkest periods of criminal fact and fiction when two courtesans are found brutally slaughtered in the lavish boudoir of a Paris house. No woman should ever see such horrors, authorities declare, but a powerful sponsor has insisted that Irene investigate the case, along with her faithful companion, sheltered parson's daughter Penelope Huxleigh. But does anyone really seek the truth, or do they wish only to bury it with the dead women—for there is a worse horror that will draw Irene and her archrival, Sherlock Holmes, into a duel of wits with a fiendish opponent. These Paris killings mimic a series of gruesome murders that terrorized London only months before, in a dangerous and disreputable part of town known as Whitechapel...

Castle Rouge

2003

IRENE ADLER Operatic diva. Femme fatale. Adventuress. And one of the world's most intriguing detectives. Before Caleb Carr, Anne Perry, and Laurie R. King, Carole Nelson Douglas gave readers a delightful look into Victoriana with one of the most impressive detective characters: Irene Adler, the only woman ever to have outwitted Sherlock Holmes, in "A Scandal in Bohemia." A charismatic performer and the intellectual equal (some would say superior) the men she encounters, Irene Adler is as much at home with a spyglass and revolver as with haute couture and gala balls. And her adventures are the stuff of legend. She has faced down sinister spies, thwarted plots against nations, spurned a monarch and lived to reap a sweet revenge...and now is on the hunt for one of the true monsters of all time-Jack the Ripper. It was she who led a most unlikely group of allies through the cellars and catacombs of 1889 Paris in the search and capture of the suspect at a horrific secret-cult ceremony held beneath the city. But disaster has scattered those allies and the Ripper has again escaped, this time from the custody of the Paris police. Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, and Watson, to reinvestigate the Whitechapel murders of the previous fall from an entirely new angle. Irene fears the Ripper will soon carve a bloody trail elsewhere and is eager to hunt this terror down. But terror has struck a little too close to home, for her own nearest and dearest are mysteriously missing—her companion/biographer, Nell Huxleigh, abducted in Paris and her barrister husband, Godfrey Norton, vanished in the wilds of Bohemia. What should Irene do first? Search for Nell, Godfrey, or the Ripper? Though Irene has many highly placed friends, the Baron de Rothschild, Sarah Bernhardt, and the Prince of Wales can only offer money and good will. For the actual pursuit, Irene must rely on an unreliable cohort, the American prostitute named Pink, who has proven to be someone with her own agenda, and Bram Stoker, the theatrical manager who was later to pen Dracula. The trail will lead back to Bohemia and on to new and bloodier atrocities before pursuers and prey reunite at a remote castle in Transylvania, where lthe Ripper is cornered and fully unveiled at last . . . a truly astounding yet chillingly logical answer to what the world has never known before: Who was Jack the Ripper? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Femme Fatale

2003

Irene Adler is the only woman to ever have outwitted Sherlock Holmes... and the one who has come closest to stealing his heart. She has competed (and sometimes cooperated) with the famous fictional detective over six popular and acclaimed novels, featuring her daring investigations across the Continent. All along, the beautiful and brilliant American diva-turned-detective has managed to conceal her background and history, even from her dashing barrister husband Godfrey Norton and her devoted friend and biographer, English spinster Nell Huxleigh. Irene's past is shrouded in secrecy-but a series of bizarre killings in New York City draws her reluctantly back to her native country, where she must race with a murderer to find her mother, a woman of mystery who may turn out to be the most notorious woman of the nineteenth century. As Irene forges a trail into her own hidden past, Nellie Bly draws another ace investigator across the Atlantic to join in the hunt for a serial killer, the last man on earth Irene Adler wants to discover anything about her shocking past... Sherlock Holmes.

Spider Dance

2004

Opera singer. Adventuress. American abroad. Irene Adler is all of this...and is also the only woman to ever have outwitted the great man, Sherlock Holmes. In Carole Nelson Douglas' novel Spider Dance, Irene has finally come home after numerous adventures, not out of loyalty to her native shores but because of a baffling puzzle, and the one thing that haunts her. Irene has no real memory of her childhood and has spent most of her life creating a persona to fit her passions. When Daredevil reporter Nelly Bly lures Irene to America by hinting that she knows of Irene's parentage, Irene takes the bait and in doing so, embarks upon a pursuit of the most notorious woman of the nineteenth century. Before the intrigue-ridden quest is over, Irene will uncover murderous international political conspiracies, lost treasure, and finally . . . the full, shocking secret of her birth.

#8.5

The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes

2012

Product Description IRENE ADLER . . . She’s one of the most mysterious women in literature, an American and the only woman to have outwitted the world's greatest consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. ON FILM . . . You've seen Irene Adler as the fetchingly treacherous minx paired with Robert Downey Jr.’s in his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes as an action hero and human calculating machine. You can see her as an apparently naked dominatrix in the BBC's modern take on a young, totally wired Sherlock Holmes. Or you can read about her further adventures after she bested Holmes in "A Scandal in Bohemia," as written by New York Times Notable Book of the Year author Carole Nelson Douglas, author of the acclaimed Good Night, Mr. Holmes and seven other novels following the adventures of Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes after “Scandal.” This novella, “The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes,” reports the pair’s most recent and intriguing encounter in post-Jack the Ripper London, from Baker Street to a high society brothel. Shocking, my dear Holmes!

Author

Carole Nelson Douglas

Author · 67 books

Carole Nelson Douglas is the author of sixty-four award-winning novels in contemporary and historical mystery/suspense and romance, high and urban fantasy and science fiction genres. She is best known for two popular mystery series, the Irene Adler Sherlockian historical suspense series (she was the first woman to spin-off a series from the Holmes stories) and the multi-award-winning alphabetically titled Midnight Louie contemporary mystery series. From Cat in an Alphabet Soup #1 to Cat in an Alphabet Endgame #28. Delilah Street, PI (Paranormal Investigator), headlines Carole's noir Urban Fantasy series: Dancing With Werewolves, Brimstone Kiss, Vampire Sunrise, Silver Zombie, and Virtual Virgin. Now Delilah has moved from her paranormal Vegas to Midnight Louie, feline PI's "Slightly surreal" Vegas to solve crimes in the first book of the new Cafe Noir series, Absinthe Without Leave. Next in 2020, Brandi Alexander on the Rocks. Once Upon a Midnight Noir is out in eBook and trade paperback versions. This author-designed and illustrated collection of three mystery stories with a paranormal twist and a touch of romance features two award-winning stories featuring Midnight Louie, feline PI and Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator in a supernatural-run Las Vegas. A third story completes the last unfinished story fragment of Edgar Allan Poe, as a Midnight Louie Past Life adventure set in 1790 Norland on a isolated island lighthouse. Louie is a soldier of fortune, a la Puss in Boots. Next out are Midnight Louie's Cat in an Alphabet Endgame in hardcover, trade paperback and eBook Aug. 23, 2016. All the Irene Adler novels, the first to feature a woman from the Sherlock Holmes Canon as a crime solver, are now available in eBook. Carole was a college theater and English literature major. She was accepted for grad school in Theater at the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University, and could have worked as an editorial assistant at Vogue magazine (a la The Devil Wears Prada) but wanted a job closer to home. She worked as a newspaper reporter and then editor in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. During her time there, she discovered a long, expensive classified advertisement offering a black cat named Midnight Louey to the "right" home for one dollar and wrote a feature story on the plucky survival artist, putting it into the cat's point of view. The cat found a country home, but its name was revived for her feline PI mystery series many years later. Some of the Midnight Louie series entries include the dedication "For the real and original Midnight Louie. Nine lives were not enough." Midnight Louie has now had 32 novelistic lives and features in several short stories as well. Hollywood and Broadway director, playwright, screenwriter and novelist Garson Kanin took Carole's first novel to his publisher on the basis of an interview/article she'd done with him five years earlier. "My friend Phil Silvers," he wrote, "would say he'd never won an interview yet, but he had never had the luck of you." Carole is a "literary chameleon" who's had novels published in many genres, and often mixes such genre elements as mystery and suspense, fantasy and science fiction, romance with mainstream issues, especially the roles of women.