An original short story set in the world of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, “Mary’s Christmas” goes back to a time long before the two met on the Sussex Downs in the spring of 1915.

It begins one winter’s evening in late 1921 or 1922 when the two are seated by their fire, sharing stories about the unexplored portions of their past. Naturally, a person might expect the older Holmes to have a large collection of these—but tonight it is Russell who astonishes her husband with news of a previously unknown, even unsuspected, relation.

Uncle Jake: scoundrel, charmer, eternal youth, black sheep of the wealthy Boston Russell family. Jake is the kind of man who literally drops out of a cloudless summer sky, who makes a good if shady living from his wits, whose holiday specialty is a series of wildly inappropriate and passionately adored Christmas presents. Whose older brother loves him, and doesn’t trust him an inch.

What young girl could resist his charms? Even when his plots lead young Mary into some areas of questionable ethics and downright danger, under her parents’ very nose.