Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie - 1937

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1937. First U.S. edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is a first printing of the first American edition. This example is in good plus condition. The orange cloth binding is tight and square with sharp corners. The spine is mildly and uniformly sunned with a tiny closed tear to the head and a faint vertical crease. The contents are crisp, clean, and bright with no spotting and no appreciable age toning. The orange topstain retains uniform, unfaded color. Even the untrimmed fore edges and bottom edges are immaculately bright. The sole previous ownership mark is contemporary - a location, Rolla, B.C. and the date March 11th 1937 all inked in the same hand on the upper front free endpaper recto.

Cards on the Table is a Poirot murder mystery, and features the first introduction of crime writer Ariadne Oliver, "Christie's literary alter ego and parody of herself". Poirot and three other detectives are invited to a game of bridge along with four other guests, whom the host (a "flamboyant collector" of crime-related memorabilia) believes to be murderers. While the detectives play bridge in one room, the other guests play in another room. Before the night is out, the host is found murdered, and Poirot must use psychology to unravel the crime.

Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is the best-selling novelist of all time, most well known for her works of mystery featuring detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Born to a wealthy family in Devon, Agatha Christie spent her happy childhood within the pages of books, having taught herself to read at an early age. Following her fathers death she was sent to a finishing school in Paris. Upon her return to England in 1910 she found her mother ill so they set off to the warmer climate of Cairo for her recovery. This first experience in Egypt was a formative one for the future writer; archaeology, Egyptology, and the Middle East would serve as settings for many of her most famous works. Though Christie was writing through the 1910s and had a number of short stories published under pseudonyms, it would be a decade before her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published.

Agatha Christie was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956 in honor of her contribution to British literature. Today Christies titles have sold over two billion copies, placing her behind only Shakespeare and the Bible in sales. Her play The Mousetrap has the longest continual initial run of any play, having been performed continuously in Londons West End since its opening in 1952.