Description
Agatha Christie Super Combo Pack – Including Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley and three archival Strand issues
Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley
A new, fascinating account of the life of Agatha Christie from celebrated literary and cultural historian Lucy Worsley.
“Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was.”
Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was “just” an ordinary housewife when she clearly wasn’t? Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions and, as Lucy Worsley says, “she was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern.” She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness.
So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?
She was born in 1890 into a world that had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do. Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of a massively, internationally successful writer. It’s also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.
With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley’s biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realize what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was—truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.
Review Quotes:
“One brilliant woman writing about another: an irresistible combination.”—Antonia Fraser, New York Times bestselling author
“This is a warm, intelligent book that does justice both to Agatha Christie’s character and to her distinctive genius as a writer of plays and novels. Someone once said that the greatest character Agatha Christie ever invented was Agatha Christie herself. If that’s true, she was waiting for the perfect biographer to bring her back to life, and she has found her in Dr. Lucy Worsley.”—A. N. Wilson
“Lucy Worsley brings Agatha Christie back to life, revealing a strong, pioneering, highly intelligent woman whose detective novels rank among the best ever written. Worsley shows us Christie’s faults and flaws in the context of her time; she evokes her houses, clothes, and the central mystery of her life in spritely sentences with a sharp ear for dialogue. Reading Worsley is as enjoyable as reading Christie herself.”—Ruth Scurr, author of A Life Told in Gardens and Shadows
“Lucy Worsley’s biography of Agatha Christie is as unputdownable as any of the novels by the Queen of Crime herself. Gripping, revealing, and ultimately extremely moving, Agatha Christie is a wonderful tribute to one of the best-loved writers of the twentieth century.” —Amanda Foreman, New York Times bestseller author
“Worsley comes up with another winner in this sprightly, endearing biography. Agatha Christie was elusive, Worsley argues, because she ‘deliberately played upon the fact that she seemed so ordinary.’ Worsley also shows how Christie took care to create narratives that put ‘the lives of women center stage,’ as well as how her personal experiences informed her work. One of Christie’s gifts, writes Worsley, was to ‘democratize the Gothic.’ While building a devoted audience, she was also breaking new ground. Throughout, Worsley takes us behind the scenes to reveal classic ‘Christie tricks’ from her books. With great affection, Worsley masterfully maneuvers her way through Christie’s life and prolific oeuvre.” —Kirkus Reviews, (starred review)
“In the best biography of Agatha Christie ever written, Lucy Worsley gets to the soul—the complex, troubled, but big soul—of our greatest whodunnit writer with laser-like precision. There will not now need to be another biography of the queen of the detective story written for decades.”—Andrew Roberts, New York Times bestselling author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny
“Agatha Christie was a modernist, an iconoclast, and a groundbreaker, according to this excellent biography from historian Worsley. Worsley offers close readings of Christie’s work and presents a careful reframing of the novelist’s famous 1926 disappearance. Drawing on personal letters and modern criticism, Worsley manages to make her subject feel fresh and new. This is a must-read for Christie fans.” —Publishers Weekly, (starred review)
“Presenting Christie as living a ‘modern life, ‘ firmly in and ‘of her time’ is Dr. Worsley’s key aim: neither nostalgic nor part of the heritage industry. She succeeds brilliantly, for the Agatha Christie (woman and author) that emerges from this astute and, at times, justifiably compassionate book is anything but cozy.” —Country Life (UK)
Lucy Worsley, OBE, is Chief Curator at the charity Historic Royal Palaces. She also presents history documentaries for the BBC. Her bestselling books include Queen Victoria; Jane Austen at Home; The Art of the English Murder; and If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home. In 2019, her BBC One program Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley won a BAFTA. She lives in England.
The Strand Mystery Magazine Issue 61: Featuring unpublished Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie Stories
The Strand Magazine: Unpublished Raymond Chandler story and the first US appearance of “Christmas Adventure” by Agatha Christie. Fiction by John Floyd, David Marcum, and Rob Witherspoon, and an exclusive interview with James Lee Burke.
We’re proud to present an unpublished Raymond Chandler in the latest issue of The Strand. Professor Sarah Trott provides an introduction and examines the biographical context of this gem. Chandler, a career oil executive before achieving fame as an author, suffered the loss of his job at age forty-four. “Advice to an Employer” shows a different side to Raymond Chandler. The wry humor is there, but the piece also reveals a silly, fun side to an author long associated with novels about the seamy side of Los Angeles.
We are also pleased to share a story featuring a certain little Belgian detective with a waxed mustache and egg-shaped head. He finds himself far away from the comforts of his usual London life, celebrating an old-fashioned family Christmas in the English countryside. Agatha Christie would expand her “Christmas Adventure” (originally published in the UK in 1923) into a longer story many readers are familiar with. This is the first time Christie’s shorter version has appeared in publication in the US. The original version is just as fun as the expanded one, complete with a sprawling mansion, a house party of young people, and an unlikely trinket in the pudding. HarperCollins will release “Christmas Adventure” in Midwinter Murder this fall, an anthology of Christie’s short stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
John Floyd continues with humor in “The Ironwood File” when a sleazy boss gets the tables turned on him from an unlikely source. Meanwhile, Rob Witherspoon’s “Le Morte d’Author” shows that even the personification of death has a witty side. We round off our fiction this issue with the Great Detective and his loyal sidekick solving a medical mystery involving one of Watson’s patients in David Marcum’s “The Triangle of Death.”
An interview with the incomparable James Lee Burke, creator of the equally incomparable Dave Robicheaux, proves Burke to be every bit as interesting as his creation. He spoke on his favorite Western films, the creative process behind his works, and the current state of the world.
Also in this issue, we have the scoop on the nominees for The Strand Critics Awards. The nominees for Best Debut and Best Novel are a varied bunch, chosen by critics from CNN, NPR, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, LA Times, and USA Today. This year’s Strand Magazine Lifetime Achievement Awards go to the trailblazing Tess Gerritsen and the always-innovative Walter Mosley. And as usual, our skilled staff of book reviewers spotlights the latest mystery and thriller novels and DVDs.
Strand Magazine: Unpublished Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie issue is the 61st issue of The Strand and the second time we’ve released works by Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie.
The Strand Magazine continues to bring our readers the best in fiction, interviews with authors, and book and audiobook reviews. In the past nine years, we’ve featured unpublished works by writers ranging from Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, H.G. Wells, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Tennessee Williams, and Joseph Heller .
For more back issues with works by literary legends, follow this link!
