Arthur Conan Doyle

A detective story sounds like the wrong choice for bedtime. In practice, Sherlock Holmes settles well: Dr. Watson narrates at an unhurried Victorian clip, most cases unfold in interviews and cab rides rather than chases, and the fog-and-gaslight setting does half the work of a sleep story on its own.

Start with the collections. Sherlock Holmes Adventures and The Return of Sherlock Holmes each hold self-contained cases, so a mystery opened tonight resolves within a listen or two instead of dangling for a week. The Greek Interpreter is a single case, and a famous one: it introduces Mycroft, the brother Holmes never mentioned. Andrew Bond reads all of these on Send Me To Sleep.

For a full novel, A Study in Scarlet goes back to the beginning, with Watson taking rooms with his strange new companion in London. The Hound of the Baskervilles is the atmospheric peak, all moor and mist, and the one title here you can hear in either voice: Elizabeth Grace reads it on The Sleepy Bookshelf and Andrew Bond on Send Me To Sleep.

One routing note: if you stay awake to learn who did it, keep to the story collections, where the reveal arrives before your alarm does.