When Colonel Protheroe is found dead from a single gun shot wound to the head, none of his neighbors in the village of St. Mary Mead is much surprised. So many people wished this local official would say farewell, if not quite so permanently. With suspects abound and the local police symied it is up to Miss Jane Marple to root out the killer.

Described by the queen of mystery herself as one of her favorites of her published work, Crooked House is a classic Agatha Christie thriller revolving around a devastating family mystery. The Leonides are one big happy family living in a sprawling, ramshackle mansion. That is until the head of the household, Aristide, is murdered with a fatal barbiturate injection. Suspicion naturally falls on the old man's young widow, fifty years his junior. But...

Set in the summer of 1917, the story follows the war-wounded Captain Arthur Hastings to the Styles St. Mary estate of his friend John Cavendish. The Cavendish household is wrought with tension due to the marriage of John's widowed mother to a suspicious younger man. Hastings runs into his old friend Hercule Poirot In the village. When the estate's trouble turns deadly, the friends unite to solve a most baffling case.

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sits the corpse of Mrs. Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist is the only sign of the fatal injection that killed her. Mrs. Boynton was a sadistic, domineering tyrant who is widely disliked by most people who have come in contact with her. Almost anyone might have had motive to kill her! But in Jerusalem, Hercule Poirot overheard Raymond Boynton telling his sister: "You...

The placid village of Lymstock seems the perfect place for Jerry Burton to recuperate from his accident under the care of his sister, Joanna. But soon a series of vicious poison-pen letters destroys the village's quiet charm, eventually causing one recipient to commit suicide. The vicar, the doctor, the servants -- all are on the verge of accusing one another when help arrives from an unexpected quarter. The vicar's houseguest happens to be none other...

In Sparkling Cyanide, Agatha Christie seats six-including a murderer-around a dining table set for seven, one year to the day that a beautiful heiress was poisoned in that very room. Six people sit down to a sumptuous meal at a table laid for seven. In front of the empty place is a sprig of rosemary-"rosemary for remembrance." A strange sentiment considering no one is likely to forget the night, exactly a year ago, that Rosemary Barton died at exactly...

From seat #9 on a flight from London to Paris, Hercule Poirot was perfectly positioned to observe his fellow passengers -- yet even he had no idea a murder had taken place during the serving of lunch. The victim, a woman known to the passengers as Mme. Giselle, is discovered to have been a notorious blackmailer. And the weapon is a poisoned dart containing a deadly South African snake venom and a blowpipe like the ones used by South American Indian...

"N or M Song Susie" were the last words uttered by a government agent. Now Tommy Beresford is asked by the British Intelligence Service to try to smoke out an enemy agent who is believed to the living at the Sans Souci Hotel in the seaside town of Leahampton. Refusing to be left behind, Tuppence joins him. Once inside the Sans Souci, the intrepid Berefords are greeted by hostile guests, a mysterious hotelier, ransacked rooms, and a disappearance....

While playing golf, Bobby Jones and Dr. Thomas discover a dying man at the base of a cliff. Before he dies, the man manages to get out the words, "Why didn't they ask Evans?" Days later, remembering things that don't seem to add up about the death, Bobby decides to investigate, and his friend Frances Derwent immediately agrees to help. Was it a misstep that sent a handsome stranger plummeting to his death over a cliff? Or was it a something more sinister?...

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English. A woman is murdered on a train. When Miss Marple telephones her friend Lucy Eyelesbarrowand asks her to...