The Circular Staircase (Annotated) (Unabridged‪)‬

“This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous.”

With this opening paragraph, Mary Roberts Rinehart introduces us to her main character and provides a brief and accurate synopsis of the story she is about to unfold. It is a story full of mysterious twists and turns, unexplained appearances and disappearances, romance, and, of course, a few dead bodies. Fortunately, everything comes right in the end.

The Circular Staircase was first serialized in 1907 and was then published in book form in 1908. It was wildly popular and established Rinehart as an important and influential American mystery author. Indeed, she became known as the American Agatha Christie.

This fully annotated edition of The Circular Staircase includes:

Explanations of historical context
Updates and revisions to vocabulary, grammatical structures, and language