2024 book club

december book

Alicia Assigns You an Agatha Christie Mystery

murder mystery · detective · crime

Known for her detective stories, particularly those featuring fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her books are outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare; that's a heck of a record.

(Of course, she is best known to this webmaster for her impressive defeat of a Vespiform—a shape-shifting alien which appeared as a giant wasp—just prior to her disappearance in 1926...)

the books we read

Murder on the Orient Express

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.

The Body in the Library

It’s seven in the morning. The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing evening dress and heavy make-up, which is now smeared across her cheeks.

But who is she? How did she get there? And what is the connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an abandoned quarry?

The respectable Bantrys invite Miss Marple to solve the mystery… before tongues start to wag.

The Murder at the Vicarage

With her gift for sniffing out the malevolent side of human nature, Miss Marple is led on her first case to a crime scene at the local vicarage. Colonel Protheroe, the magistrate whom everyone in town hates, has been shot through the head. No one heard the shot. There are no leads. Yet, everyone surrounding the vicarage seems to have a reason to want the Colonel dead.

It is a race against the clock as Miss Marple sets out on the twisted trail of the mysterious killer without so much as a bit of help from the local police.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

A widow's sudden suicide sparks rumors that she murdered her first husband, was being blackmailed, and was carrying on a secret affair with the wealthy Roger Ackroyd. The following evening, Ackroyd is murdered in his locked study, but not before receiving a letter identifying the widow's blackmailer. Kings Abbot is crawling with suspects and it's up to famous detective, Hercule Poirot, to solve the case.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Who poisoned the wealthy Emily Inglethorpe, and how did the murderer penetrate and escape from her locked bedroom? Suspects abound in the quaint village of Styles St. Mary—from the heiress's fawning new husband to her two stepsons, her volatile housekeeper, and a pretty nurse who works in a hospital dispensary.

Making his unforgettable debut, the brilliant Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is on the case.

And Then There Were None

First, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder.

One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion.

what we've read so far

JANUARY – A Man Called Ove

FEBRUARY – Children of the New World

MARCH – Next Year in Havana

APRIL – Ella Minnow Pea

MAY – Gideon the Ninth

JUNE – Airborn

JULY – Choose Your Own Book Month!

AUGUST – Unwind

SEPTEMBER – Magic for Liars

OCTOBER – The City We Became

NOVEMBER – The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

DECEMBER – Alicia Assigns You an Agatha Christie Mystery