The debut of Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Agatha Christie and her remarkable Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot
Invalided home from the Western Front, Arthur Hastings arrives at Styles Court anticipating a relaxing sojourn in the English countryside. It turns out to be anything but. Late one night, Hastings is summoned to the locked bedroom door of Emily Inglethorp, mistress of the manor. A terrible commotion is happening inside,...

A superb example of Christie drawing on real life events for her inspiration. Inspired by the horror of the true life serial killer Jack the Ripper, Christie sought to reduce the violence in The ABC Murders. She was more interested in mystery than horror. Was she wrong to do this? Would the book be better if the truly savage crimes of a serial killer were described in more detail? An ever changing society is depicted through the use of the railways....

Linnet Doyle is young, beautiful, and rich. She's the girl who has everything-including the man her best friend loves. Linnet and her new husband take a cruise on the Nile, where they meet the brilliant detective Hercule Poirot. It should be an idyllic trip, yet Poirot has a vague, uneasy feeling that something is dangerously amiss ..

Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffee house is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified, but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one's mouth. Could there be a connection with...

In Agatha Christie's classic mystery, Cards on the Table, the wily Hercule Poirot is on the case when a bridge night turns deadly

Mr. Shaitana is famous as a flamboyant party host. Nevertheless, he is a man of whom everybody is a little afraid. So when he boasts to Hercule Poirot that he considers murder an art form, the detective has some reservations about accepting a party invitation to view Shaitana's "private collection."

Indeed,

...

"Hercule Poirot returns home after an agreeable luncheon to find an angry woman waiting to berate him outside his front door. Her name is Sylvia Rule, and she demands to know why Poirot has accused her of the murder of Barnabas Pandy, a man she has neither heard of nor ever met...Poirot is equally shocked, because he too has never heard of any Barnabas Pandy, and he certainly did not send the letter in question. He cannot convince Sylvia Rule of his...

"When Cora Lansquenet is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard's funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard's will, Cora was clearly heard to say, 'It's been hushed up very nicely, hasn't it ... But he was murdered, wasn't he?' In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery"--Page 4 of cover.

In Mrs. McGinty's Dead, one of Agatha Christie's most ingenious mysteries, the intrepid Hercule Poirot must look into the case of a brutally murdered landlady.

Mrs. McGinty died from a brutal blow to the back of her head. Suspicion falls immediately on her shifty lodger, James Bentley, whose clothes reveal traces of the victim's blood and hair. Yet something is amiss: Bentley just doesn't seem like a murderer.

Could

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Hercule Poirot is summoned to solve a case involving the murder of a seductive woman accompanying a scientific party investigating the secrets of ancient Babylon.

"When the luxurious Blue Train arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake serene Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But she will never wake again--for a heavy blow has killed her, disfiguring her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her precious rubies are missing. The prime suspect is Ruth's estranged husband, Derek. Yet Hercule Poirot is not convinced, so he stages an eerie reenactment of the journey, complete with the murderer on board."--Back...