Agatha Christie
Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was a British writer who wrote mysteries, psychological fiction, plays, and poetry. That is an almost laughably cryptic basic description of one of the bestselling writers in publishing. Currently, it is estimated that her books have sold approximately two billion copies. Her estate estimates that she is the most widely published author or text after the Bible and Shakespeare. She has been translated into 103 languages. Not shabby for a upper middle-class girl who liked lab work in chemistry and pharmaceuticals — and who liked to write.
She bestrides the world of mysteries like a colossus. She is often considered formulaic in her approach, “cookie-cutter,” but any respectful reading quickly dispels that envious evaluation. She wrote sixty-seven detective novels and fourteen short-story collections, intimidating enough, and influential beyond all measure for a century now. She also wrote a series of novels under the name of Mary Westmacott which astonish anyone who reads them not as gothic romance, as they were marketed, but as psychological surgeries, merciless analytical examinations of women at the sharp end of reality. She often wrote with humor, with a sharp and sassy satirical eye, and she was capable of a sensitive pathos with the people who were collateral damage in her so-called “whodunits.” Remarkably, she had a cool and ambivalent attitude toward her heroes and heroines, including Miss Marple and the great Hercule Poirot.
Agatha Christie is a complex and complicated writer. I invite you to read her as comfort fare, which she is, and I invite you to read her as a twentieth-century novelist, which she is in a circumspect and mysterious way. Enjoy!
And Then There Were None [mass market edition]
And Then There Were None [mass market edition]
If you’re one of the few who haven’t experienced the genius of Agatha Christie, this novel is a stellar starting point." — DAVID BALDACCI, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
An exclusive authorized edition of the most famous and beloved stories from the Queen of Mystery.
Ten people, each with something to hide and something to fear, are invited to an isolated mansion on Indian Island by a host who, surprisingly, fails to appear. On the island they are cut off from everything but each other and the inescapable shadows of their own past lives. One by one, the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts. And one by one, they die…
Which among them is the killer and will any of them survive?
"Agatha Christie is the gateway drug to crime fiction both for readers and for writers. . . . Just one book is never enough." — VAL MCDERMID, Internationally Bestselling Author
“The whole thing is utterly impossible and utterly fascinating. It is the most baffling mystery Agatha Christie has ever written.” — New York Times
“One of the most ingenious thrillers in many a day.” — Time magazine
“One of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies.” — The Observer (UK)
“There is no cheating; the reader is just bamboozled in a straightforward way from first to last….The most colossal achievement of a colossal career. The book must rank with Mrs. Christie’s previous best—on the top notch of detection.” — New Statesman (UK)
“The most astonishingly impudent, ingenious and altogether successful mystery story since The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.” — Daily Herald (UK)
“What Agatha Christie taught me was all about the delicate placement of the red herring. She was the ultimate genius behind ‘by indirections shall we find directions out.’ ” — Elizabeth George, New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Lynley novels