A classic novel of desire and jealousy.Ann Prentice falls in love with Richard Cauldfield and hopes for new happiness. Her only child, Sarah, cannot contemplate the idea of her mother marrying again and wrecks any chance of her remarriage. Resentment and jealousy corrode their relationship as each seeks relief in different directions. Are mother and daughter destined to be enemies for life or will their underlying love for each other finally win through?Famous for her ingenious crime books and plays, Agatha Christie also wrote about crimes of the heart, six bittersweet and very personal novels, as compelling and memorable as the best of her work.
A young man, broken down in the fog, witnesses a murder he is asked to conceal… A full-length novel adapted by Charles Osborne from Agatha Christie’s acclaimed play.When a stranger runs his car into a ditch in dense fog in South Wales and makes his way to an isolated house, he discovers a woman standing over the dead body of her wheelchair-bound husband, gun in her hand. She admits to murder, and the unexpected guest offers to help her concoct a cover story.But is it possible that Laura Warwick did not commit the murder after all? If so, who is she shielding? The victim’s young half-brother or his dying matriarchal mother? Laura’s lover? Perhaps the father of the little boy killed in an accident for which Warwick was responsible? The house seems full of possible suspects…THE UNEXPECTED GUEST is considered to be one of the finest of Christie’s plays. Hailed as ‘another Mousetrap’ when it opened on 12 August 1958 in the West End, it ran for 604 performances over the succeeding 18 months and has been staged many times around the world over the last 40 years.
A full-length novel by Charles Osborne adapted from Agatha Christie’s stage play, in which a diplomat’s wife finds a body that mustn’t be discovered…Following BLACK COFFEE and THE UNEXPECTED GUEST comes the final Agatha Christie play novelisation, bringing her superb storytelling to a new legion of fans.Clarissa, the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat, is given to daydreaming. ‘Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do?’ she muses.Clarissa has her chance to find out when she discovers a body in the drawing-room of her house in Kent. Desperate to dispose of the body before her husband comes home with an important foreign politician, Clarissa persuades her three house guests to become accessories and accomplices. It seems that the murdered man was not unknown to certain members of the house party (but which ones?), and the search begins for the murderer and the motive, while at the same time trying to persuade a police inspector that there has been no murder at all…
This new edition, which is reproduced from a first printing of the book, is introduced by the author Martin Edwards, archivist of the Detection Club, and includes a never-before-published Preface by Agatha Christie, ‘Detective Writers in England’, in which she discusses her fellow writers in the Detection Club.Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country houseposes a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham. All are different, all are plausible, all are on their own – and none of them can ask a policeman…This classic whodunit adopted a completely new approach: Milward Kennedy proposed the title, John Rhode plotted the murder and provided the suspects, and four of their contemporaries were asked to lend their well-known detectives to the task of providing solutions to the crime. But there was to be another twist: the authors would swap detectives and use the characters in their sections of the book. Thus Gladys Mitchell and Helen Simpson swapped Mrs Bradley and Sir John Saumarez, and Dorothy Sayers and Anthony Berkeley swapped Lord Peter Wimsey and Roger Sheringham, enabling the authors to indulge in skilful and sly parodies of each other.The contributors to ASK A POLICEMAN are: John Rhode, Helen Simpson, Gladys Mitchell, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Milward Kennedy with Agatha Christie and Martin Edwards.
A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.Whilst dining at the Bantrys Miss Marple is asked to tell a murder mystery. She recounts the time she could tell from a man’s behaviour, that he was planning to kill his wife. But at the time of the murder he had a perfect alibi…
A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.Alan Everard is a struggling young portrait painter caught in a love triangle between his wife and his daughter’s godmother. But which of them does he love, and which one should he hate?
A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.This electric short story begins in October on the island of Rhodes, a veritable paradise of privacy, beauty and calm, or so Hercule Poirot has imagined. The reality is quite startlingly different; as each woman lies bathing in the bright sun the idyll is disturbed by the arrival of famed Chanel beauty Valentine Chantry and a ripple of malice is felt across the island. Captivated by her wiles and immaculate good looks one young married man falters, closely watched by Valentine’s brooding husband and all before the holidaymakers and the watchful eye of Poirot. Amidst the heady pink gins and close quarters Poirot senses that someone has murder in their heart, and he guesses right. Everything comes to a tragic pinnacle and only Poirot the quiet observer can piece together what has happened within this lover’s triangle.
A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.An ageing barrister begins to regret past events when an old flame asks him to investigate the murder of her eccentricwealthy aunt in a mystery that recalls an old nursery rhyme…
A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.A new bride is murdered in Cabin 66 on a cruise to Egypt, while her husband is ashore with other passengers. Their travelling companion Hercule Poirot finds that his holiday has become an investigation…
A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.Recently swept off her feet, after a week of courting, the newly married Alix Martin is a woman obsessed by a reoccurring dream of her new husband’s murder. Each time she can see the murderer clearly and it is the mild mannered man she had almost married wreaking his revenge. But, what is worse is that at the end of the dream she thanks the murderer. Alix, perplexed and confused calms herself in their pretty garden when their gardener, two days early, wishes her a happy trip and says he’s sad to hear that the couple may never return. More than perplexed Alix is now scared, is the simple gardener confused or is she?