Spellbound before his own portrait, Dorian Gray utters a fateful wish. In exchange for eternal youth he gives his soul, to be corrupted by the malign influence of his mentor, the aesthete and hedonist Lord Henry Wotton. The novel was met with moral outrage by contemporary critics who, dazzled perhaps by Wilde's brilliant style, may have confused the author with his creation, Lord Henry, to whom even Dorian protests, 'You cut life to pieces with your...

When mild-mannered Reverend Stephen Babbington chokes on his cocktail at a dinner party thrown by Sir Charles Cartwright, it is thought by nearly all thirteen guests, including Belgian detective extraordinaire, Hercule Poirot, to be an accidental death. Shortly afterwards, a second death in suspiciously similar circumstances puts both Poirot and a team of sleuths on the trail of a murderer.