Reggie and Nigel Heath are relatively close in age, but worlds apart in personality. The older of the two brothers, Reggie is a successful attorney with charisma to spare. Nigel has always struggled to step out of his shadow. When Reggie leases space in an office building on London's Baker Street, he finds that the paperwork comes with an odd stipulation: his firm must receive and respond with a standard reply to letters sent to Sherlock Holmes (who famously occupied the same address). When Nigel, newly suspended from practicing law and relegated to clerk duties, becomes intrigued by one of the 'Dear Sherlock' notes, he disappears quite suddenly, leaving a dead body in his wake, and Reggie must hop the next flight to Los Angeles to uncover the truth. Hot on his heels is his sometime lover, Laura - a quick-witted stage actress who's captured the hearts of both brothers.

「合约里规定承租人要收这些信，不得向邮局抱怨、不得要求他们停送，甚至要用固定格式回信……咦？我不知道把它放到哪里去了。」
「我还是不懂你说什么。」
「收件匣里一堆这种东西，你拿最上面的起来看吧。」
雷基拿起一封信来看了看，愣住了。他瞪着信封上的地址好一会儿，然后不敢相信地望着弟弟说，「奈吉，这是在开玩笑吗？」
「不是玩笑。」
雷基大声唸出信上地址，「夏洛克．福尔摩斯先生，伦敦贝格街 二二一B。」
他轻蔑地把信丢回桌上给奈吉。
奈吉泰然自若地说，「再看看其他的。」
雷基拿起另一封，唸出收件人和地址，「私家侦探夏洛克．福尔摩斯，伦敦贝格街二二一B。」
再一封，「请贝格街二二一B转交养蜂人夏洛克．福尔摩斯先生。」（译注：福尔摩斯退休后养蜂去了。）

Alternate histories. Alternate realities.

It’s said that every choice creates multiple timelines, each one exploring what could have happened if a different decision had been made. Most of these alternate histories stem from different outcomes to a pivotal battle, or to an assassination attempt, or to the ending or escalation of a war. All violent, all bloody, all brutal. But what about those choices made during peacetime, when there was no monumental, ongoing conflict? After all, everyone knows how significant the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can be, how far-reaching its effects can be felt.

In these pages you will find fifteen new branches of history written by some of today’s greatest science fiction and fantasy writers, including Elektra Hammond, Dale Cozort, Harry Turtledove, C.W. Briar, Rick Wilber, Juliet E. McKenna, Michael Robertson, Kat Otis, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Brian Hugenbruch, Stephen Leigh, Elizabeth Kite, Ian R. MacLeod, Mike Barretta, and Kari Sperring, all stemming from a peaceful divergence in our past. Join them as they wander down familiar paths…

…and then swerve down roads not taken.

The entertaining story of four utopian writers—Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman—and their continuing influence today
For readers reared on the dystopian visions of Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid's Tale, the idea of a perfect society may sound more sinister than enticing. In this lively literary history of a time before "Orwellian" entered the cultural lexicon, Michael Robertson reintroduces us to a vital strain of utopianism that seized the imaginations of late nineteenth-century American and British writers.
The Last Utopians delves into the biographies of four key figures--Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman—who lived during an extraordinary period of literary and social experimentation. The publication of Bellamy's Looking Backward in 1888 opened the floodgates of an unprecedented wave of utopian writing. Morris, the Arts and Crafts pioneer, was a committed socialist whose News from Nowhere envisions a workers' Arcadia. Carpenter boldly argued that homosexuals constitute a utopian vanguard. Gilman, a women's rights activist and the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper," wrote numerous utopian fictions, including Herland, a visionary tale of an all-female society.
These writers, Robertson shows, shared a belief in radical equality, imagining an end to class and gender hierarchies and envisioning new forms of familial and romantic relationships. They held liberal religious beliefs about a universal spirit uniting humanity. They believed in social transformation through nonviolent means and were committed to living a simple life rooted in a restored natural world. And their legacy remains with us today, as Robertson describes in entertaining firsthand accounts of contemporary utopianism, ranging from Occupy Wall Street to a Radical Faerie retreat.