While Iris Wildthyme remains the anchor of the Obverse-iverse, with Miss Wildthyme & Friends Investigate, Obverse Books broadens the scope of storytelling. Not only do each of these four stories stretch to novellette length, (a first for an Obverse Books collection), but the collection takes the opportunity to explore the bizarre worlds that exist around Iris Wildthyme even after she's left the party. With appearance by Professor Challenger, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, Senor 105, The Manleight Halt Irregulars and Iris and Panda themselves, there's something for everyone here...
Spanning a full century, this collection is split into a quartet of stories: The first story, The Found World features Professor George Challenger, a character who previously appeared in such Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories as "The Poison Belt", and "The Disintegration Machine". Jim Smith, author of the Bernice Summerfield audio "The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel" (which featured another of Doyle's creatures, Mycroft Holmes) presents an untold tale of this fascinating and infamously confounding character described by Doyle as "just a homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science". World war has commenced for the first time in history, and the government need Challenger's team to return to their Lost World. Meanwhile, a drunken Iris Wildthyme runs 'The Tradesman's Entrance' in Soho and a peculiar bottle turns up in the Amazonian mud...
After an initial appearance in Paul Magrs' "The Delightful Bag", the Manleigh Halt Irregulars return for a longer visit. The MHI consist of Miss Clarissa Miller, feisty Edwardian journalist and investigator, her two indefagatible policemen helpers and the mysterious old man, Dogberry - and the unstabkle, time jumping police station they inhabit. A new adventure of the Manleigh Halt Irregulars, The Irredeemable Love, is written by Nick Wallace, author and editor for the Bernice Summerfield range as well as the acclaimed final 8th Doctor BBC novel Fear Itself. Across the wilds of Britain, the MHI team hunt a strange yellow bottle, with fearsome consequences! Scientist, musician, explorer, masked wrestler: Senor 105 will be familiar to readers of Iris Wildthyme and The Celestial Omnibus as Mexico's caretaker of the unknown. Defending his homeland from threats domestic and alien, somehow the major world powers don't quite take the luchador's claims seriously. Not since the incident with the Cactus People. With his Parisian companion Sheila at his side, Senor 105 invites a diverse group of people to a dinner party held on the Day of the Dead. Each of these guests owes him a favor and he is collecting on their promises to attain a mysterious objective. In Elementary, my dear Sheila by Cody Schell, a murder sets in motion a series of events that leads this group on an adventure through a strange underground city full of even stranger travelers, some more familiar than others, including one very close to his heart. Iris Wildthyme, Pan-spatial Daredevil-trix, and her best friend Panda need no introduction. However, they may need a stiff drink to tackle the challenge of solving the mystery of the mysterious perfume bottle. The first Iris story of this length in eight years, The Shape of Things is revealed in this concluding story by Stuart Douglas.
