Voices

Agatha Christie

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, in the United Kingdom, the daughter of a wealthy American stockbroker. Her father died when she was eleven years old. Her mother taught her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age. At the age of 16, she went to Mrs. Dryden's finishing school in Paris to study singing and piano. In 1914, at age 24, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. While he went away to war, she worked as a nurse and wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), which wasn't published until four years later. When her husband came back from the war, they had a daughter. In 1928 she divorced her husband, who had been having an affair. In 1930, she married Sir Max Mallowan, an archaeologist and a Catholic. She was happy in the early years of her second marriage, and did not divorce her husband despite his many affairs. She travelled with her husband's job, and set several of her novels set in the Middle East. Most of her other novels were set in a fictionalized Devon, where she was born. Agatha Christie is credited with developing the "cozy style" of mystery, which became popular in, and ultimately defined, the Golden Age of fiction in England in the 1920s and '30s, an age of which she is considered to have been Queen. In all, she wrote over 66 novels, numerous short stories and screenplays, and a series of romantic novels using the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was the single most popular mystery writer of all time. In 1971 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.Read the rest

Biography from Open Library, CC BY-SA

The Stacks

The Books

Ordered the way the charts order books: the member average out of 10, weighted by how many readers have rated them. Unrated titles file below.

In the Margins

What Readers Said

The most recent reviews of Agatha Christie's books, newest first.

And Then There Were None reviewed by @commuterfiction
9 out of 10
Ten people are invited to an island off Devon. A recording accuses each of them of causing a death. They die in the order of a nursery rhyme. The explanation arrives in a document after the last chapter.
And Then There Were None@commuterfiction21 Aug 2026
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd reviewed by @verity_lane
10 out of 10
I would rather lose a finger than tell you one single thing about this. Read it before somebody wrecks it for you, and somebody will, it's a century old and people are careless. Top of my year and it's only May.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd@verity_lane7 Aug 2026
And Then There Were None reviewed by @grimdarkgareth
8 out of 10
Eight, and I did not expect to be handing Agatha Christie an eight. Everybody dies. Everybody!
And Then There Were None@grimdarkgareth27 Jul 2026

The Reading Room

On These Lists

Member-built lists that make room for this writer.

The Community

Close Readers

Members who have finished more than one of these books.

Agatha Christie

The Books

What Readers Said

On These Lists

Plots That Actually Land

Detectives Who Are No Help At All

Close Readers

And Then There Were None

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Murder on the Orient Express

What Readers Said

On These Lists

Plots That Actually Land

Detectives Who Are No Help At All

Close Readers

Forty Minutes Each Way

Nobody Gets Out

And Then There Were None reviewed by @commuterfiction

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd reviewed by @verity_lane

And Then There Were None reviewed by @grimdarkgareth

Plots That Actually Land

Detectives Who Are No Help At All

And Then There Were None

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Murder on the Orient Express

And Then There Were None reviewed by @commuterfiction

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd reviewed by @verity_lane

And Then There Were None reviewed by @grimdarkgareth

Plots That Actually Land

Detectives Who Are No Help At All

Forty Minutes Each Way

Nobody Gets Out