Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Which of Agatha Christie's novels is YOUR all-time favorite?

About a month ago, back on Sept. 11, I published a post about Western writer Louis L’Amour and talked about how prolific he was. In all, he wrote 89 novels, and I mentioned that I’d like to one day be able to say that I’ve read all of his books.

A few days later, a reader shot me an e-mail that said if I thought L’Amour was a prolific writer then I would also be impressed by the output of world famous mystery writer Agatha Christie. As with L’Amour, I’ve never read any of Christie’s books, but I’ve always wanted to read them.

Christie, who died at the age of 85 in 1976, is the best-selling novelist of all-time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Her novels are said to have been out-sold only by the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare with about four billion copies of them having been sold worldwide.

As with L’Amour, it would be an understatement to say that Christie was a prolific writer. In all, she wrote 66 detective novels and 15 short story collections. What follows is a complete list of her novels, taken from her official Web site, www.agathachristie.com.

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
2. The Secret Adversary (1922)
3. The Murder on the Links (1922)
4. The Man in the Brown Suit (1924)
5. The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
6. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
7. The Big Four (1927)
8. The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
9. The Seven Dials Mystery (1929)
10. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
11. The Sittaford Mystery (1931)
12. Peril at End House (1932)
13. Lord Edgware Dies (1933)
14. Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
15. Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (1934)
16. Three Act Tragedy (1935)
17. Death in the Clouds (1935)
18. The A.B.C. Murders (1936)
19. Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
20. Cards on the Table (1936)
21. Dumb Witness (1937)
22. Death on the Nile (1937)
23. Appointment with Death (1938)
24. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1938)
25. Murder is Easy (1939)
26. Ten Little Indians (1939)
27. Sad Cypress (1940)
28. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940)
29. Evil Under the Sun (1941)
30. N or M? (1941)
31. The Body in the Library (1942)
32. Five Little Pigs (1942)
33. The Moving Finger (1942)
34. Towards Zero (1944)
35. Death Comes as the End (1944)
36. Sparkling Cyanide (1945)
37. The Hollow (1946)
38. Taken at the Flood (1948)
39. Crooked House (1949)
40. A Murder is Announced (1950)
41. They Came to Baghdad (1951)
42. Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (1952)
43. They Do It with Mirrors (1952)
44. After the Funeral (1953)
45. A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
46. Destination Unknown (1954)
47. Hickory Dickory Dock (1955)
48. Dead Man’s Folly (1956)
49. 4.50 from Paddington (1957)
50. Ordeal by Innocence (1958)
51. Cat Among the Pigeons (1959)
52. The Pale Horse (1961)
53. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962)
54. The Clocks (1963)
55. A Caribbean Mystery (1964)
56. At Bertram’s Hotel (1965)
57. Third Girl (1966)
58. Endless Night (1967)
59. By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968)
60. Hallowe’en Party (1969)
61. Passenger to Frankfurt (1970)
62. Nemesis (1971)
63. Elephants Can Remember (1972)
64. Postern of Fate (1973)
65. Curtain (1975)
66. Sleeping Murder (1976)

In the end, how many of these Agatha Christie books have you had the chance to read? Which did you like or dislike? Which would you recommend? Which was your favorite and why? Let us know in the comments section below.

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