Showing results by author "Agatha Christie" in All Categories

A foggy night... a lonely country house... and a woman with a gun in her hand quietly surveying the dead body of her husband. It looked like a straightforward case of murder. Or was it? As the ghosts of an old wrong begin to emerge from the past, the case begins to look anything but straightforward... First staged at the Duchess Theatre in London in 1958, this play ran for 604 performances and is as gripping and ingenious as you would expect from the Queen of Crime.

Is the ‘perfect murder’ possible? Can that crime be committed with such consummate care, with such exacting skill, that it is unsolvable—even to the most astute investigator? In this unique collection, legendary crime writers Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Russell Thorndike each attempt to create the unsolvable murder, which Superintendent Cornish of the CID then attempts to unravel.

A classic Christie mystery. Read by Hugh Fraser who plays Hugh Fraser in the popular TV series. At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce – a hostile thirteen-year-old – boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the ‘evil presence’. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer…

Agatha Christie’s classic thriller. Features the recurring character Colonel Race from Death on the Nile, Cards on the Table and The Man in the Brown Suit. Six people sit down to dinner at a table laid for seven. In front of the empty place is a sprig of rosemary – in solemn memory of Rosemary Barton who died at the same table exactly one year previously.No one present on that fateful night would ever forget the woman’s face, contorted beyond recognition – or what they remembered about her astonishing life.

A dying woman confesses a terrible secret to her priest along with a cryptic list of nine names. Before he is able to uncover anything more, the priest is struck dead in the fog and the police discover the list in his shoe. Our hero Mark Easterbrook, a historian, learns of a secretive organisation known as The Pale Horse and of their supernatural connections in the village of Much Deeping. The list of names seems to foretell the deaths of several people and Mark must piece together the clues and unearth the connections between them all.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring June Whitfield as Miss Marple, the deceptively mild spinster sleuth. Wealthy businessman Rex Fortescue is found dead with rye grain in his pocket. His death is followed in quick succession by a woman dying while eating bread and honey, and a maid in her garden. Inspector Neele, in charge of investigating the spate of murders, consults with Miss Marple, who has an interesting and surprising theory to offer.

Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s deceptively mild spinster sleuth, is being treated to a few days’ holiday by her niece, staying at Bertram’s Hotel, a dignified, unostentatious establishment tucked away in a back street of busy Mayfair. Here is a place where sedate upper class ladies, retired military gentlemen and the higher echelons of the clergy can indulge in the comforts of a bygone age. But Miss Marple begins to feel uneasy. Something sinister lurks beneath the polished veneer.

It was not unusual to find the beautiful bronzed body of the sun-loving Arlena Stuart stretched out on a beach, face down. Only, on this occasion, there was no sun...she had been strangled. Ever since Arlena's arrival at the resort, Hercule Poirot had detected sexual tension in the seaside air. But could this apparent 'crime of passion' have been something more evil and premeditated altogether?

When the luxurious Blue Train arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake serene Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But she will never wake again, for a heavy blow has killed her, disfiguring her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her precious rubies are missing.

Agatha Christie's most famous murder mystery, recorded by the director and star of the blockbuster film adaptation, Kenneth Branagh. Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year, but by the morning it is one passenger fewer. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Isolated and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must identify the murderer - in case he or she decides to strike again.

With World War II at an end, Charles Hayward is finally free to marry the woman he loves, Sophia Leonides. However, she refuses - the unexplained death of her grandfather, wealthy businessman Aristide Leonides, draws her back to the suffocating environment of her family home. Charles follows, but his arrival coincides with the discovery that Aristide’s death was murder. The ensuing investigation drags Charles into the dark heart of the family, and its deadly secrets and dangers.

Lady Tresselian invites several guests to stay at her seaside house at Gull’s Point. Against her better judgment she has allowed her late husband’s ward, handsome tennis ace Neville Strange, and his wife Kay to come at the same time as Neville’s ex-wife Audrey. Other guests include Mary, Lady Tresselian’s companion; Ted, Kay’s ever-present friend; Thomas, a family friend who has just returned from spending the war in Africa and Lady Tresselian’s old friend Lord Justice Treves.

Six short stories from the Queen of Crime, telling, amongst other things, of Pink Pearls and Sinister Strangers.Bonus Feature: Includes an exclusive Q&A session between Hugh Fraser and David Brawn, Publishing Operations Director at HarperCollins.Tommy and Tuppence Beresford were restless for adventure, so when they were asked to take over Blunt’s International Detective Agency, they leapt at the chance

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot with Stephanie Cole and Donald Sinden. Hercule Poirot, along with three other luminaries from the world of crime detection, is invited to dinner by the renowned London socialite Dr Shaitana. Also on the guest list are four members of what Shaitana calls his Black Museum - a collection of murderers who have each succeeded in 'getting away with it'. After midnight, when the guests prepare to leave, they make a terrible discovery.

A collection of Agatha Christie's stories of the macabre and the occult, from the story "The Red Signal", in which an omen from "the other side" unmasks an insane killer, to "The Hound of Death", in which a convent blows up - and on the remaining wall is left a black powder mark, in the shape of a great dog. The other spine-chilling mysteries are "The Fourth Man", "The Gipsy", and "The Lamp".

Like many of her contemporaries, Agatha Christie wrote stories for a variety of magazines in the 1920s and '30s, and most of these eventually found their way into her books of short stories. Now, many years after her death, detective work worthy of Agatha Christie herself has unearthed "new" stories, most of which have never been published anywhere in the world since their original appearances.

John Moffatt stars as the famous Belgian detective in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of one of Christie's most popular novels. Linnet Ridgeway has led a charmed life. Blessed with beauty, enormous wealth, and a devoted husband, she has everything anyone could wish for. But as the happy couple set out on an idyllic honeymoon cruise on the Nile, storm clouds are gathering. Linnet's former friend, Jacqueline de Bellefort, follows her and Simon wherever they go and Linnet senses she is in danger.

Roger Ackroyd knew too much. He knew that the woman he loved had poisoned her brutal first husband. He suspected also that someone had been blackmailing her. Now, tragically, came the news that she had taken her own life with a drug overdose.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have just become the proud owners of an old house in an English village. Along with the property, they have inherited some worthless bric-a-brac, including a collection of antique books. While rustling through a copy of The Black Arrow, Tuppence comes upon a series of apparently random underlinings.

When a stranger runs his car into a ditch in dense fog near the South Wales coast, and makes his way to an isolated house, he discovers a woman standing over the dead body of her wheelchair-bound husband, a gun in her hand. She readily admits to murder, and the unexpected guest offers to help her concoct a cover story.