The Circular Staircase: Classic Tales Edition

Written by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Narrated by B. J. Harrison

Aunt Rachel heard something last night. Gertrude heard it as well. Tonight, shots ring out, and a dead body appears at the foot of the circular staircase.¶ Now it is up to Rachel to piece together what happened, as she weaves her way through the circular statements of paranoid staff, secret passages, and even suspicions of ghosts. Rinehart was known as the American Agatha Christie, and The Circular Staircase shaped the “Had I But Known” element of the mystery genre, while remaining true to many gothic and Victorian motifs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B.J. Harrison
• Release date: Nov 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781950524693

Mary Roberts Rinehart

Often referred to as the American Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American journalist and writer who is best known for the murder mystery The Circular Staircase—considered to have started the “Had-I-but-known” school of mystery writing—and the popular Tish mystery series. A prolific writer, Rinehart was originally educated as a nurse, but turned to writing as a source of income after the 1903 stock market crash. Although primarily a fiction writer, Rinehart served as the Saturday Evening Post’s correspondent for from the Belgian front during the First World War, and later published a series of travelogues and an autobiography. Roberts died in New York City in 1958.