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Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and became, quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written towards the end of the First World War, introduced us to Hercule Poirot, who was to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. She is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in 44 foreign languages. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, and six novels under the name of Mary Westmacott and saw her work translated into more languages than Shakespeare. Her enduring success, enhanced by many film and TV adaptations, is a tribute to the timeless appeal of her characters and the unequalled ingenuity of the plots.
First came a sinister warning to Poirot not to eat any plum pudding...then the discovery of a corpse in a chest...next, an overheard quarrel that led to murder...the strange case of the dead man who altered his eating habits...and the puzzle of the victim who dreamt his own suicide.
Think you know Agatha Christie? Think again! To the world she was Agatha Christie, legendary author of bestselling whodunits. But in the 1930s she wore a different hat, travelling with her husband, renowned archaeologist Max Mallowan, as he investigated the buried ruins and ancient wonders of Syria and Iraq. When friends asked what this strange 'other life' was like, she decided to answer their questions by writing down her adventures in this eye-opening book. Described by the author as a 'meandering chronicle of life on an archaeological dig', Come, Tell Me How You Live is Agatha Christie's very personal memoir of her time spent in this breathtaking corner of the globe, living among the working men in tents in the desert where recorded human history began.
A 2014 World Book Night selection. 'It's been hushed up very nicely, hasn't it? But he was murdered, wasn't he?' There are certain things that are best left unsaid. Though tragedy had touched the life of the wealthy Richard Abernethie, his sudden death seemed pretty unremarkable for a man of his age. So why would his sister wait until his funeral to say he had been murdered? When she is savagely killed with a hatchet the next day, her extraordinary remark suddenly takes on a chilling significance. In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery...
A wheelchair-bound Poirot returns to Styles, the venue of his first investigation, where he knows another murder is going to take place...
Agatha Christie's world-famous serial killer mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
Agatha Christie's seasonal mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
Agatha Christie's ingenious murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
Agatha Christie's most famous murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
Agatha Christie's most audacious crime mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
Agatha Christie's first ever murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover - includes for the first time the original courtroom climax as an alternate ending.
With the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie wanted to write a mystery that the reader couldn't solve. When Roger Ackroyd is murdered following the suicide of his friend Mrs Ferrar, it seems everyone has something to gain from his death. Only the mustachioed Hercule Poirot is able to uncover the mystery. Agatha Christie is the original 'Queen of Crime' and this is absolutely first-rate stuff. Will you guess who the murderer is? I doubt it. February 2010 Guest Editor Simon Kernick on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd A classic example of masterful plotting and the best of all her books, in my opinion. It has a huge twist that at the time was both brave and original, and which has been imitated many times since, both in film and literature. When I first read it, it knocked me for six.
Agatha Christie's world-famous mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. Ten strangers, apparently with little in common, are lured to an island mansion off the coast of Devon by the mysterious U.N.Owen. Over dinner, a record begins to play, and the voice of an unseen host accuses each person of hiding a guilty secret. That evening, former reckless driver Tony Marston is found murdered by a deadly dose of cyanide. The tension escalates as the survivors realise the killer is not only among them but is preparing to strike again! and again!
October 2013 Guest Editor Linwood Barclay on The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie... My introduction to the mystery genre was really the Hardy Boys, but my first real, honest-to-God crime novel for grownups (although I read it when I was around twelve) was this one by the Grand Dame of whodunits. While this was my first, it was far from my favourite. Around the age of eleven or twelve, I read And Then There Were None, and that one made my head spin. Christie came up with countless original plots that the rest of us have been ripping off and disguising as our own for decades.
November 2012 Guest Editor Kate Mosse on Sleeping Murder... No list would be complete without the Queen of Crime herself. I first stumbled upon Christie on a wet teenage family holiday. Her characterisation, her neat and slick plotting, the way she summons up a sense of place and period. This is one of my favourites, the last Miss Marple, a tale of old secrets and long shadows.
Agatha Christie's world-famous Miss Marple mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. It's seven in the morning. The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing evening dress and heavy make-up, which is now smeared across her cheeks. But who is she? How did she get there? And what is the connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an abandoned quarry? The respectable Bantrys invite Miss Marple to solve the mystery! before tongues start to wag.
Maxim Jakubowski's view... The novel that introduced both Christie and her immortal creation Hercule Poirot. Still as ingenious all these years later as we follow the quaint detective display his incomparable powers of detection. If you like Agatha Christie try Ngaio MarshMaxim Jakubowski recommends: The Ngaio Marsh Collection by Ngaio Marsh
One of Sister Wendy Beckett's favourite books. The wonderful Hercule Poirot works his magic in this murder mystery set in the exotic location of Egypt. July 2010 Guest Editor Louise Candlish on Agatha Christie... I read this when I was about eleven and remember it being the first time I felt that nothing else mattered in the world except finding out what happened on the pages in my hands. I thought it was the most ingenious thing ever to have come out of anyone’s imagination.
Nick Buckley was an unusual name for a pretty young woman. But then she had led an unusual life. First, on a treacherous Cornish hillside, the brakes on her car failed. Then, on a coastal path, a falling boulder missed her by inches. Later, an oil painting fell and almost crushed her in bed. Upon discovering a bullet-hole in Nick's sun hat, Hercule Poirot decides the girl needs his protection. At the same time, he begins to unravel the mystery of a murder that hasn't been committed. Yet.
Agatha Christie's first ever murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover - includes for the first time the original courtroom climax as an alternate ending. 'Beware! Peril to the detective who says: It is so small - it does not matter... Everything matters.' After the Great War, life can never be the same again. Wounds need healing, and the horror of violent death banished into memory. Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to the rolling country estate of Styles to recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder. Fortunately he knows a former detective, a Belgian refugee, who has grown bored of retirement ... The first Hercule Poirot mystery, now published with a previously deleted chapter and introduced by Agatha Christie expert Dr John Curran.
One of Agatha Christie's darkest and most sinister mysteries, newly adapted for BBC Television by the award-winning team behind And Then There Were None, Witness for the Prosecution, Ordeal by Innocence and The ABC Murders. When an elderly priest is murdered, the killer searches the victim so desperately that Father Gorman's already ragged cassock is torn in the process. But just what was the killer looking for? And what had a dying woman confided to the priest on her death-bed, only hours earlier? Maybe the three women, rumoured to practise the 'Dark Arts', who run the Pale Horse public house can provide the answers. Or maybe the solution lies in the darker side of human nature...
Agatha Christie's seasonal mystery thriller in a sumptuous Christmas hardback Special Edition. 'There is, at Christmas, a spirit of goodwill. People who do not feel amiable are putting great pressure on themselves to appear amiable! If you dam the stream of natural behaviour, mon ami, sooner or later the dam bursts and a cataclysm occurs!' It is Christmas Eve. The Lee family reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture, followed by a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. But when Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the village with a friend for Christmas, offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man...
Agatha Christie's masterpiece, and the best-selling murder mystery book of all time, celebrates its 80th birthday with this gorgeous hardback Special Edition. 'We're not going to leave the island. None of us will ever leave. It's the end, you see - the end of everything...' 1939. Europe teeters on the brink of war. Ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. Cut off from the mainland, with their generous hosts Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen mysteriously absent, they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly they realise they may be harbouring a murderer among their number. The 10 strangers include a reckless playboy, a troubled Harley Street doctor, a formidable judge, an uncouth detective, an unscrupulous mercenary, a God-fearing spinster, two restless servants, a highly decorated general and an anxious secretary. One by one they are picked off. Who will survive? And who is the killer? Copies of an ominous nursery rhyme hang in each room, the murders mimicking the awful fates of its 'Ten Little Soldier Boys'.
From the Queen of Crime, the first time all of her spookiest and most macabre stories have been collected in one volume. 'From behind the curtains there still sounded the terrible high long-drawn scream - such a scream as Raoul had never heard. It died away with a horrible kind of gurgle. Then there came the thud of a body falling...' For lovers of the supernatural and the macabre comes this collection of ghostly and chilling tales from Agatha Christie. Acknowledged the world over as the undisputed Queen of Crime, in fact she dabbled in her early writing career with mysteries of a more unearthly kind - stories featuring fantastic psychic visions, spectres looming in the shadows, encounters with deities, eerie messages from the Other Side, even a man who switches bodies with a cat... This haunting compendium gathers together all of Christie's spookiest and most macabre short stories, some featuring her timeless detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Finally together in one volume, it shines a light on the darker side of Agatha Christie, one that she herself relished, identifying ten of them as 'my own favourite stories written soon after The Mysterious Affair at Styles, some before that'. * Contains 20 stories: The Last Seance * In a Glass Darkly * The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb * SOS * The Fourth Man * The Idol House of Astarte * The Gipsy * Philomel Cottage * The Dream * The Lamp * Wireless * The Mystery of the Blue Jar * The Blue Geranium * The Wife of the Kenite * The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael * The Call of Wings * The Red Signal * The Flock of Geryon * The Dressmaker's Doll * The Hound of Death 'Reading a perfectly plotted Agatha Christie is like crunching into a perfect apple: pure, crisp, absolute satisfaction.' TANA FRENCH
Did you know that one of the world's sharpest and most forensic minds inhabited the persona of an attractive old lady, with pink cheeks and blue eyes, and a gentle, rather fussy manner? Discover the secrets of Miss Marple in this gorgeous book of her quotes and sayings, and an essay by Agatha Christie appearing for the first time in any book! 'Really, I have no gifts - except perhaps a certain knowledge of human nature.' Everyone in St Mary Mead knew Miss Marple: fluffy and dithery in appearance, but inwardly as sharp and as shrewd as they make them. 'This is a wicked murderer, Inspector - and the wicked should not go unpunished.' Now, in her own words, discover the razor-sharp mind of the world's favourite armchair sleuth, and the wit and wisdom of the Queen of Crime who created her. Includes an exclusive essay by Agatha Christie written to promote the Miss Marple stories: Does a Woman's Instinct Make Her a Good Detective?
A sun-drenched story of desire and murder with a conclusion you'll never see coming... `The best Agatha Christie since And Then There Were None'-Observer The moment Arlena Stuart steps through the door, every eye in the resort is on her. She is beautiful. She is famous. And in less than 72 hours she will be dead. On this luxury retreat, cut off from the outside world, everyone is a suspect. The wandering husband. The jealous wife. The bitter step-daughter. They all had a reason to kill Arlena Stuart. But who hated her enough to do it?
Agatha Christie's world-famous mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. Ten strangers, apparently with little in common, are lured to an island mansion off the coast of Devon by the mysterious U.N.Owen. Over dinner, a record begins to play, and the voice of an unseen host accuses each person of hiding a guilty secret. That evening, former reckless driver Tony Marston is found murdered by a deadly dose of cyanide. The tension escalates as the survivors realise the killer is not only among them but is preparing to strike again... and again...
Agatha Christie's world-famous Miss Marple mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. It's seven in the morning. The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing evening dress and heavy make-up, which is now smeared across her cheeks. But who is she? How did she get there? And what is the connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an abandoned quarry? The respectable Bantrys invite Miss Marple to solve the mystery... before tongues start to wag.
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