And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None is a 1939 mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie. It is the world's best-selling mystery novel and one of the best-selling books of all time, with more than 100 million copies sold by 2007. It has been adapted numerous times for film, television, radio, theatre, and other media. In 2015, it was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a global vote organised by the author's estate. The story takes place on an isolated island off the coast of Devon. Ten individuals are accused of past crimes, and are killed one by one according to the lines of a popular rhyme. Christie described the book as the most difficult of her novels to write because of the complexity of the plot and its solution. The book was first published in the United Kingdom by Collins Crime Club in 1939 as Ten Little Niggers, after an 1869 minstrel song that forms the central element of the story. It continued to be published in the UK under that title until 1985, when it became And Then There Were None. The first American edition, published in 1940, was called And Then There Were None from the start, and has mostly continued under that title, although between 1964 and 1986 it was published by Pocket Books of New York as Ten Little Indians. In both the US and later UK editions the text was modified to avoid the racial epithet, referring throughout to "Ten Little Indians" or "Ten Little Soldiers".

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