Hercule Poirot's Christmas

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Hercule Poirot's Christmas Page 27

by Agatha Christie


  I have a hope that someday I will read her again. My husband, Phil, is confident there will be coconut cream pie in Heaven.

  I have a different wish.

  I’m counting on a new Christie for Christmas.

  Carolyn Hart is the author of the Death on Demand novels (including The Christie Caper), which have won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. She is also the creator of the highly praised Henrie O series (Death on the River Walk). One of the founders of Sisters in Crime (www.sistersincrime.org), Ms. Hart lives in Oklahoma City.

  About Agatha Christie

  Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Mrs Christie is the author of eighty crime novels and short story collections, nineteen plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

  Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written towards the end of World War I (during which she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachments). In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian investigator who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. After having been rejected by a number of houses, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.

  In 1926, now averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by William Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship that lasted for fifty years and produced over seventy books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s works to be dramatised—as Alibi—and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play, opened in 1952 and runs to this day at St Martin’s Theatre in the West End; it is the longest-running play in history.

  Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since when a number of her books have been published: the bestselling novel Sleeping Murder appeared in 1976, followed by An Autobiography and the short story collections Miss Marple’s Final Cases; Problem at Pollensa Bay; and While the Light Lasts. In 1998, Black Coffee was the first of her plays to be novelised by Charles Osborne, Mrs Christie’s biographer.

  The Agatha Christie Collection

  Christie Crime Classics

  The Man in the Brown Suit

  The Secret of Chimneys

  The Seven Dials Mystery

  The Mysterious Mr Quin

  The Sittaford Mystery

  The Hound of Death

  The Listerdale Mystery

  Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

  Parker Pyne Investigates

  Murder Is Easy

  And Then There Were None

  Towards Zero

  Death Comes as the End

  Sparkling Cyanide

  Crooked House

  They Came to Baghdad

  Destination Unknown

  Spider’s Web *

  The Unexpected Guest *

  Ordeal by Innocence

  The Pale Horse

  Endless Night

  Passenger To Frankfurt

  Problem at Pollensa Bay

  While the Light Lasts

  Hercule Poirot Investigates

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles

  The Murder on the Links

  Poirot Investigates

  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

  The Big Four

  The Mystery of the Blue Train

  Black Coffee *

  Peril at End House

  Lord Edgware Dies

  Murder on the Orient Express

  Three-Act Tragedy

  Death in the Clouds

  The ABC Murders

  Murder in Mesopotamia

  Cards on the Table

  Murder in the Mews

  Dumb Witness

  Death on the Nile

  Appointment with Death

  Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

  Sad Cypress

  One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

  Evil Under the Sun

  Five Little Pigs

  The Hollow

  The Labours of Hercules

  Taken at the Flood

  Mrs McGinty’s Dead

  After the Funeral

  Hickory Dickory Dock

  Dead Man’s Folly

  Cat Among the Pigeons

  The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

  The Clocks

  Third Girl

  Hallowe’en Party

  Elephants Can Remember

  Poirot’s Early Cases

  Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

  Miss Marple Mysteries

  The Murder at the Vicarage

  The Thirteen Problems

  The Body in the Library

  The Moving Finger

  A Murder Is Announced

  They Do It with Mirrors

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  4.50 from Paddington

  The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

  A Caribbean Mystery

  At Bertram’s Hotel

  Nemesis

  Sleeping Murder

  Miss Marple’s Final Cases

  Tommy & Tuppence

  The Secret Adversary

  Partners in Crime

  Nor M?

  By the Pricking of My Thumbs

  Postern of Fate

  Published as Mary Westmacott

  Giant’s Bread

  Unfinished Portrait

  Absent in the Spring

  The Rose and the Yew Tree

  A Daughter’s a Daughter

  The Burden

  Memoirs

  An Autobiography

  Come, Tell Me How You Live

  Play Collections

  The Mousetrap and Selected Plays

  Witness for the Prosecution and Selected Plays

  * novelised by Charles Osborne

  www.agathachristie.com

  For more information about Agatha Christie, please visit the official website.

  HERCULE POIROT’S CHRISTMAS by Agatha Christie

  Copyright © 1939 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company)

  “Essay by Charles Osborne” excerpted from The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie. Copyright © 1982, 1999 by Charles Osborne. Reprinted with permission.

  “A Christie for Christmas.” Copyright © 2003 by Carolyn Hart.

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  PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

  Mobipocket Reader edition published December 2003 ISBN: 0-0607-6742-1

  This e-book was set from the Agatha Christie Signature Edition published by HarperCollins Publishers, London.

  First published in Great Britain by Collins 1938

  For more information about Agatha Christie e-books visit www.perfectbound.com/agathachristie

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