The Circular Staircase

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. Rachel Innes, a middle-aged spinster, rents a sprawling summer house called Sunnyside with her orphaned niece and nephew. What begins as a quiet country retreat soon unravels: a shot on the east veranda, a bank president's son dead at the foot of a circular staircase, secret midnight intrusions, and a hidden room behind the chimney. When her nephew Halsey disappears after a visit to a local doctor, Rachel — aided by young detective Jamieson — must unravel a decades-old bank fraud, a faked death, and a conspiracy that reaches into the highest reaches of the town. Published in 1908, this is Mary Roberts Rinehart's breakthrough "Had I But Known" mystery and the basis for the silent film The Bat.