Sparkling Cyanide

Rosemary Barton’s birthday party takes a turn for the worse when she imbibes cyanide instead of champagne. The verdict? Suicide. But why would a beautiful, wealthy woman kill herself, especially when so many of her guests — including her lover, her husband, and her own younger sister — have reasons to want her dead? When anonymous letters questioning the coroner’s verdict start turning up a year later, Rosemary’s husband decides to recreate the party and corner the killer. Unfortunately, the killer has other ideas.

Agatha Christie is nearly synonymous with upper-class British mysteries, for good reason. She set the standard for the genre in over 60 novels and dozens of short stories, also creating two classic detectives: the fastidious Belgian, Hercule Poirot, and English spinster Jane Marple. No one could match Christie's knack for weaving clues into her stories, then turning the whole thing inside out -- shocking her readers every time.