<P> It is Christie's best - selling novel; with more than 100 million copies sold, it is also the world's best - selling mystery and one of the best - selling books of all time . Publications International lists the novel as the seventh best - selling title . </P> <P> In the novel, a group of people are lured into coming to an island under different pretexts, e.g., offers of employment, to enjoy a late summer holiday, or to meet old friends . All have been complicit in the deaths of other human beings, but either escaped justice or committed an act that was not subject to legal sanction . The guests and two servants who are present are "charged" with their respective "crimes" by a gramophone recording after dinner the first night, and informed that they have been brought to the island to pay for their actions . They are the only people on the island, and cannot escape due to the distance from the mainland and the inclement weather, and gradually all ten are killed in turn, each in a manner that seems to parallel the deaths in the nursery rhyme . Nobody else seems to be left alive on the island by the time of the apparent last death . A confession, in the form of a postscript to the novel, unveils how the killings took place and who was responsible . </P> <P> On a hot, early August day sometime in the late 1930s, eight people arrive on a small, isolated island off the Devon coast of England . Each appears to have an invitation tailored to his or her personal circumstances, such as an offer of employment or an unexpected late summer holiday . They are met by Thomas and Ethel Rogers, the butler and cook / housekeeper, who state that their hosts, Mr Ulick Norman Owen and his wife Mrs Una Nancy Owen, whom they have not yet met in person, have not arrived, but left instructions, which strikes all the guests as odd . </P> <P> A framed copy of a nursery rhyme, "Ten Little Niggers" (called "Ten Little Indians" or "Ten Little Soldiers" in later editions), hangs in every guest's room, and ten figurines sit on the dining room table . After supper, a gramophone (or "phonograph") record is played; it contains a recording that describes each visitor in turn, accuses each of having committed murder but escaping justice, and then asks if any of "the accused" wishes to offer a defence . All but Anthony Marston and Philip Lombard deny the charges, and Miss Brent refuses to discuss the matter . </P>

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