Agatha Christie

Born in Torquay, England, in 1890, Agatha Christie became one of the most famous mystery writers ever published. She wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections, along with plays, and her work introduced some of fiction’s most enduring sleuths, especially Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), brought Poirot onto the page, and she kept readers guessing for decades with tightly built puzzles and memorable settings. She also wrote as Mary Westmacott, and her stage play The Mousetrap became legendary for its extraordinary long run.

Christie died in 1976, but her books have never really gone out of style. Part of her appeal is how readable she remains: the prose is clear, the characters are vivid, and the mystery always comes first, making her an easy author to discover and a hard one to stop reading.