The Return of Sherlock Holmes was published eight years after The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, in which Holmes’ character was killed. But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s readers were desperate for more of Holmes’ adventures, so he brought the character back in the first short story in this collection, “The Empty House.” Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories have been adapted numerous times, including the 2009 and 2011 movies starring Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr., and for the popular television shows Elementary, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu, and the BBC’s Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. The first episode of Sherlock’s third series, named “The Empty Hearse,” references “The Empty House” from this volume.