Daniel Stashower Books in Order

Harry Houdini is framed for espionage and imprisoned, prompting Sherlock Holmes to investigate on his behalf. Detective and escape artist join forces against blackmailers targeting the Prince of Wales, combining deductive reasoning with Houdini's unusual practical skills.

Magician Paul Galliard is offered a television project celebrating performers from his father’s generation. The opportunity comes with a dangerous condition: he must attempt the notorious Bullet Catch, the same illusion that killed his father.

Daniel Stashower traces Arthur Conan Doyle’s path from provincial doctor to celebrated storyteller and spiritualist campaigner. Drawing on extensive research, the biography explores his friendships, adventures, contradictions, and the convictions that dominated his final years.

Young Harry Houdini is called on to investigate a wealthy toy manufacturer’s murder in 1897 New York. With his brother’s reluctant help, he follows linked deaths into the world of rare curios, collectors, and dangerous secrets.

When a magician’s assistant is killed onstage, Harry Houdini turns his knowledge of performance toward solving the crime. Working with his wife Bess and brother Dash, he investigates a murder concealed within the spectacle of an illusion.

Harry Houdini attends a séance hoping to expose a medium’s tricks, only to witness an apparition apparently commit murder. With the medium securely bound and the killer vanished, he must untangle an impossible crime from theatrical deception.

This history follows television pioneer Philo Farnsworth from a rural childhood to a struggle over ownership of his invention. His confrontation with RCA leader David Sarnoff reveals how corporate power shaped the technology’s development and the recognition its inventor received.

An annotated collection of Arthur Conan Doyle’s private letters traces his life, writing, relationships, and public convictions. The correspondence reveals his changing feelings about Sherlock Holmes and the spiritualist beliefs that became central to his later years.

As Abraham Lincoln travels toward his inauguration in 1861, detective Allan Pinkerton and investigator Kate Warne uncover a plot to kill him in Baltimore. Their attempt to prevent the attack faces a deadline and skepticism from Lincoln’s own advisers.

In Depression-era Cleveland, a series of brutal killings confronts public safety director Eliot Ness with a case unlike his celebrated Chicago exploits. Daniel Stashower reconstructs the investigation, the city’s mounting fear, and the elusive murderer who challenged his reputation.

Daniel Stashower reconstructs the nineteenth-century death of New York cigar-shop worker Mary Rogers and the investigation it inspired. He connects the unsolved case with Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional detective story and the emerging culture of crime reporting.