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Happy Tuesday y’all! How is everyone’s August going? Honestly, it’s not been too bad here, but I can’t wait until school starts again! Over at That Artsy Reader Girl, Jana has given us a cool topic to write about this week-our favorite books are over ten years old, and I decided to go further back and share some of my favorite Agatha Christie books. They are all easily over ten years old, and the copies of most of these I’ve read are over ten years old. So let’s see what my 10 favorite Agatha Christie books are!

My 10 Favorite Agatha Christie Books

I have always loved reading Agatha Christie’s books, but they were rarely ones I would reach for first. But at the end of 2020, I discovered a Christie reading challenge run by the Official Agatha Christie site (you can find the site here). And since the beginning of 2021, I have been reading one of her books a month (with a couple of exceptions). While that has only made a small dent in her extensive collection, I still want to share some of my favorites. Of the ten books listed below, two are short story collections, and the other eight are novels.

The titles will take you to the book’s Official Agatha Christie page, and the images will take you to Amazon.

The Secret Adversary

  • Release Date: 1922
  • Main Character: Tommy & Tuppence

Tommy and Tuppence, two young people short of money and restless for excitement, embark on a daring business scheme – Young Adventurers Ltd.

Their advertisement says they are ‘willing to do anything, go anywhere.’ But their first assignment, for the sinister Mr. Whittington, plunges them into more danger than they ever imagined.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

  • Release Date: 1926
  • Main Character: Hercule Poirot

Roger Ackroyd was a man who knew too much. He knew the woman he loved had poisoned her first husband. He knew someone was blackmailing her – and now he knew she had taken her own life with a drug overdose. Soon the evening post would let him know who the mystery blackmailer was. But Ackroyd was dead before he’d finished reading it – stabbed through the neck where he sat in the study.

The Murder at the Vicarage

  • Release Date: 1930
  • Main Character: Miss Marple

‘Anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe,’ declared the parson, brandishing a carving knife above a joint of roast beef, ‘would be doing the world at large a favour!’ It was a careless remark for a man of the cloth. And one which was to come back and haunt the clergyman just a few hours later – when the colonel was found shot dead in the clergyman’s study. But as Miss Marple soon discovers, the whole village seems to have had a motive to kill Colonel Protheroe.

Murder on the Orient Express

  • Release Date: 1934
  • Main Character: Hercule Poirot

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.

And Then There Were None

  • Release Date: 1939
  • Main Character: none

1939. Europe teeters on the brink of war. Ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. Cut off from the mainland, with their generous hosts, Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen, mysteriously absent; they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly, they realize they may be harbouring a murderer among their number.

The tension escalates as the survivors realise the killer is not only among them but is preparing to strike again… and again…

Evil Under the Sun

  • Release Date: 1940
  • Main Character: Hercule Poirot

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?

The Labours of Hercules

  • Release Date: 1947
  • Main Character: Hercule Poirot

Before retirement, Poirot takes on the twelve labours of his namesake, each one a new mystery to be solved across Europe. This collection includes 12 short stories.

After the Funeral (aka Funerals are Fatal)

  • Release Date: 1953
  • Main Character: Hercule Poirot

The master of a Victorian mansion dies suddenly – and his sister is convinced it was murder…. When Cora is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard’s funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard’s will, Cora was clearly heard to say: ‘It’s been hushed up very nicely, hasn’t it…But he was murdered, wasn’t he?’ In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery.

The Pale Horse

  • Release Date: 1961
  • Main Character: Ariadne Oliver

To understand the strange goings on at The Pale Horse Inn, Mark Easterbrook knew he had to begin at the beginning. But where exactly was the beginning? Was it the savage blow to the back of Father Gorman’s head? Or was it when the priest’s assailant searched him so roughly he tore the clergyman’s cassock? Or could it have been the priest’s visit, just minutes before, to a woman on her death bed?

Or was there a deeper significance to the violent squabble which Mark Easterbrook had himself witnessed earlier? Wherever the beginning lies, Mark and his sidekick, Ginger Corrigan, may soon have cause to wish they’d never found it.

The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural

  • Release Date: 2019
  • Main Character: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple

For lovers of the supernatural and the macabre comes this collection of ghostly and chilling tales from Agatha Christie. Acknowledged the world over as the undisputed Queen of Crime, in fact, she dabbled in her early writing career with mysteries of a more unearthly kind – stories featuring fantastic psychic visions, spectres looming in the shadows, encounters with deities, eerie messages from the Other Side, even a man who switches bodies with a cat…

This haunting compendium gathers together all of Christie’s spookiest and most macabre short stories, some featuring her timeless detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Finally, together in one volume, it shines a light on the darker side of Agatha Christie, one that she herself relished, identifying ten of them as ‘my own favourite stories written soon after The Mysterious Affair at Styles, some before that.’

Those are my 10 favorite Agatha Christie novels! Have you read any of these? Which are your favorites? Is there one I need to read?

My 10 Favorite Agatha Christie Books

Looking for some more books to read? Check out my other book reviews and my monthly reading wrap-ups.

12 thoughts on “My 10 Favorite Agatha Christie Books

  1. I have several Agatha Christie books to read and listen to but have only listened to two so far. This is a good list to give me a bit of direction. Thanks Pam.

  2. Agatha Christie is an author that I still have yet to read! I recently found a collection of Christie’s from my dad’s younger days so they’re older (slightly mustier) editions of the books. I was very excited about that and thought I’d pick one up immediately but sadly, that still hasn’t happened 😅 I’ll definitely keep your list in mind for when I unearth them again and decide to read one!

  3. Agatha Christie has so many distinctrive covers- I guess that happens when you’re that popular and there are so many different editions of your work- but even though I’ve read only a little Christie I always love seeing the covers! And as a kid my mom used to take me to a certain department store and they had a bookshop that always had Christies, so I guess my love for the covers started young. 🙂

  4. I love your twist on today’s topic. I’m going to bookmark this post because I want to read some of her books soon!

  5. I love that you focused on Agatha Christie! I’ve only read And Then There Were None, but I know the stories to some of her other books because of movies. I really want to read more by her. It’s just a matter of when. 😀

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