The Agatha Christie Companion

Revised and updated is the comprehensive guide to all of Agatha Christie's works. Fully catalogued including plot summaries as well as profiles of her non-mystery works.

The undisputed "Queen of Crime," Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is the bestselling novelist of all time. As the creator of immortal detectives Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, she continues to enthrall readers around the world and is drawing increasing attention from scholars, historians, and critics. But Christie wrote far beyond Poirot and Marple. A varied life including war work, archaeology, and two very different marriages provided the backdrop to a diverse body of work. This encyclopedic companion summarizes and explores Christie's entire literary output, including the detective fiction, plays, radio dramas, adaptations, and her little-studied non-crime writing. It details all published works and key themes and characters, as well as the people and places that inspired them, and identifies a trove of uncollected interviews, articles, and unpublished material, including details that have never appeared in print. For the casual reader looking for background information on their favorite mystery to the dedicated scholar tracking down elusive new angles, this companion will provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date information.

The author of over 100 plays, short story collections, and novels, which have been translated into 103 languages, Agatha Christie has been outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Though many have tried to copy her, no one has succeeded, and Christie remains the best selling modern writer throughout the world. Now Charles Osborne, a lifelong student of Agatha Christie, has created a comprehensive guide to her world as examined through her books. Illustrated with rarely seen photos and updated to include details of the publications, films and TV adaptations of her writings, this book provides fascinating reading for any Christie aficionado.

Over 400,000 copies sold! If you are a mystery buff, an Agatha Christie fan, an occasional Christie reader or an acquaintance of any of the above, this book is for you and all your fortunate friends The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie, on the 25th anniversary of Agatha Christie's death, continues as a grand salute to the queen of mysteries. It is filled with wonderful and surprising things about her books, her characters, the movies and plays based on them, and Dame Agatha herself. Original contributions by some sixty writers celebrate the Christie touch. Take your pick among thse intriguing features and speculations: -Surviving an English country weekend - if you had the advice of Hercule Poirot - A guide to the Christie poisions, as well as the cruder methods of genteel mayhem - The "other" Agatha Christie who wrote romantic novels - A murder victim's (!) first-person account of a Christie Mystery Weekend - The Hercule Poirot Double-Crostic and other puzzles That's a taste. There's much more - and witty plot summaries of all Christie's novels, plays, and many of her short stories. (But no endings, of course!) This treasury is more than entertainment - it is also a personal reference work for Christie fans. And there are scores of movie posters, film stills, illustrations and a Christie mystery map, too.

Russell H. Fitzgibbon presents a short history of Dame Agatha's life, criticism of her works, and a summary of how critics and reviewers view her work. Includes a bibliography of all the works of Christie published in either Great Britain or the United States, classified according to the detectives involved; an alphabetical list of Christie detective and mystery book and short-story titles; a short-story finder for Christie collections; and an index of all but the least important of the thousands of characters introduced by the author in the detective and mystery short stories and novels.

Sophie learns a new lesson in truth when sabotage threatens to destroy the friendship between the Corn Flakes.''Excellent for Homeschool Use'''