Now that Agatha Christie Month at the Syosset Public Library is drawing to a close I would like to leave you all with a little treat. Dame Christie wrote over 100 different works. Have you ever wondered which of those were her own favorites? According to the official Agatha Christie website, these were her favorites (in no particular order):
Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer. Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man’s enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again.
Ten people arrive on Indian Island off England’s southwest coast. They have been drawn there, to a grand mansion, by enticing invitations from a mysterious host. Of them, none will leave alive. They are the prey of a diabolical killer. Gradually each realizes that every single one of them is marked for murder. Terror mounts as their numbers dwindle.
“I like a good detective story, but they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The story begins long before that.” So remarks esteemed criminologist Mr. Treves. Truer words have never been spoken, for a psychopathic killer has insinuated himself , with cunning manipulation, into a quiet village on the river Tern. But who is his intended victim? What are his unfathomable motives? And how and when will he reach the point of murder…the zero point?
In the affluent suburb of Swindley Dean, Aristide Leonides lies dead from barbiturate poisoning. An accident? The police think it’s unlikely, and suspicion immediately falls on Aristide’s luscious widow, fifty years his junior, who is now set to inherit a fortune. But criminologist Charles Hayward is taking a much harder look. He’s casting about his own doubts on the innocence of the entire Leonides brood and every member of the Leonides clan has a motive.
Recovering from amnesia, Dr. Arthur Calgary discovers that he alone could have provided an alibi in a scandalous murder trial. It ended in the conviction of Jacko Argyle. The victim was Jacko’s own mother, and to make matters worse, he died in prison. But the young man’s innocence means that someone else killed the Argyle matriarch, and would certainly kill again to remain in the shadows.
The placid village of Lymstock seems the perfect place for Jerry Burton to recuperate from his accident under the care of his sister, Joanna. But soon a series of vicious poison-pen letters destroys the village’s quiet charm, eventually causing one recipient to commit suicide. The vicar, the doctor, the servants—all are on the verge of accusing one another when help arrives from an unexpected quarter. The vicar’s houseguest happens to be none other than Jane Marple.
Gipsy’s Acre was a truly beautiful place, with views of the sea, and in Michael Rogers it stirred a childlike fantasy. There, among the dark fir trees, he planned to build a house, find a girl, and live happily ever after. Yet, as he left the village, a shadow of menace hung over the land?for this was the place where accidents happened.
You are cordially invited to a murder. A personal ad in the newspaper inviting strangers to participate in an evening of murder mystery fun and games at the home of Letitia Blacklock is an invitation that Miss Jane Marple cannot pass up. A good thing, too, because when the lights are dimmed real gunshots ring out, killing a young boy. Now it’s time for a new, much more serious game of “whodunit.”
A murder in a small English village leads Hercule Poirot into a strange mystery involving a determined, curious spinster, the local doctor, and a wide range of suspects with possible motives and mysterious relationships.
– posted by Sonia, Readers’ Services
“A collection of autobiographical sketches that explore the worlds of competitive and recreation swimming. From her training for the Olympic trials as a teenager, to meditative swims in pools and oceans as an adult, Shapton contemplates the sport that has shaped her life.”
with David Houston. Friday, March 8, 2013
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