The Sittaford Mystery

”The table spelled out a name. The blizzard buried the truth. The skis gave both away.

Six people, snowbound in a remote Dartmoor house, decide to pass a winter evening with a game of table‑turning. The little table wobbles. It spells out a name: TREVELYAN. Then: DEAD. Then: MURDER. The time is recorded: 5:25.

Six miles away, Captain Trevelyan is, indeed, dead. A green baize draught‑stopper cracked his skull. His best friend, Major Burnaby, walked through a blizzard to find him, looking exhausted when he arrived at eight o'clock. Everyone assumes no one could have covered that distance faster in the snow. Everyone is wrong.

The nephew is arrested. His fiancée, Emily Trefusis, refuses to believe it. She partners with a cynical young journalist and begins turning over stones no one else thought to lift. Why did a mother and daughter rent a freezing moorland house for the winter? Why does a quiet man lurking in the village turn out to be a retired Scotland Yard inspector? And why, hidden in a chimney, are there ski boots that don't fit the dead man?

There is no Hercule Poirot in this one. No Miss Marple either. Instead, Christie gives us Emily Trefusis: sharp‑tongued, clear‑eyed, and willing to use a journalist's crush to get what she needs. The suspects multiply. Everyone is lying about something—a secret fiancé, a prison break, a novelist desperate to avoid divorce court. The red herrings are so plentiful you could pickle them.

But the real trick is the snow itself. It isolates, conceals, and eventually reveals. When Emily finally pulls the truth out of that chimney, the solution is so audacious—and so sneaky—that you'll want to flip back to the seance and watch Christie hide it in plain sight.

• First published in 1931, the first Christie novel to receive a different title for the US market (The Murder at Hazelmoor)

• A rare Christie novel featuring neither Poirot nor Marple, instead showcasing the brilliant amateur detective Emily Trefusis

• Praised by The New York Times Book Review in 1931 as “up to her usual high standard and compares favourably with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd"

Available in multiple formats:

• Paperback & Hardcover: Beautifully designed print editions presenting the complete, unabridged text made to last.

• Ebook: DRM-free EPUB compatible with Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and all major e-readers.

• Audiobook: Professionally narrated, complete and unabridged, available on all major audiobook platforms.

A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears, or the perfect gift for anyone who knows that a seance is just a party trick, unless the murderer is in the room.

About the Author

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was an English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright, widely regarded as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her works have sold over two billion copies worldwide, outranked only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She created two of the most famous detectives in fiction: the meticulous Belgian Hercule Poirot and the sharp‑eyed amateur Miss Jane Marple. The Sittaford Mystery was published in 1931, the same year she began work on her other great snow‑bound mystery, Murder on the Orient Express. She died in 1976 in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.