Agatha Christie Audiobook Classics Crime Fiction Mystery Mystery Thriller

Miss Marple #2

The Body in the Library

Name: The Body in the Library
Rating: 3.81 (126154 reviews)
Author: Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie February 1, 1942

3.81 126.2k Ratings

Ongoing Status

18 Views

Start Reading

Synopsis

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.

Librarian’s note: this entry is for the novel “The Body in the Library.” Collections and other Miss Marple stories are located elsewhere on Goodreads. The series includes 12 novels and 20 short stories. Entries for the short stories can be found by searching Goodreads for: “a Miss Marple Short Story.”

Books similar to The Body in the Library

Death on the Nile

★ 4.12

Agatha Christie

The tranquility of a lovely cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything – until she lost her life.

Who is also on board? Christie's great detective Hercule Poirot is on holiday. He recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ‘I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.’ Despite the exotic setting, nothing is ever quite what it seems…

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

★ 4.26

Agatha Christie

Considered to be one of Agatha Christie's greatest and also, most controversial mysteries. 'The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd' breaks the rules of traditional mystery.

The peaceful English village of King’s Abbot is stunned. The widow Ferrars dies from an overdose of Veronal. Not twenty-four hours later, Roger Ackroyd—the man she had planned to marry—is murdered. It is a baffling case involving blackmail and death that taxes Hercule Poirot’s “little grey cells” before he reaches one of the most startling conclusions of his career.

Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. These are just the novels; Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel, play and short story has its own entry on Goodreads.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

★ 4

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's debut novel was also the first to feature Hercule Poirot, her famously eccentric Belgian detective.

A refugee of the Great War, Poirot has settled in England near Styles Court, the country estate of his wealthy benefactor, the elderly Emily Inglethorp. When Emily is poisoned and the authorities are baffled, Poirot puts his prodigious sleuthing skills to work. Suspects are plentiful, including the victim’s much younger husband, her resentful stepsons, her longtime hired companion, a young family friend working as a nurse, and a London specialist on poisons who just happens to be visiting the nearby village.

All of them have secrets they are desperate to keep, but none can outwit Poirot as he navigates the ingenious red herrings and plot twists that contribute to Agatha Christie's well-deserved reputation as the queen of mystery.

A Study in Scarlet

★ 4.13

Arthur Conan Doyle

Our first meeting with Sherlock Holmes. And it's John Watson's too! They meet at the start of this novel, and the young doctor is astonished by Holmes' many idiosyncrasies including his talents on the violin.

But it's not long before Sherlock Holmes, with Watson in tow, is working with Scotland Yard investigating the murder of two Americans whose deaths have some mysterious connection to sinister groups gathering power in both Britain and America.

Here's where it all began - 'A Study in Scarlet.' Meet Sherlock Holmes, one of the world's leading consulting detectives - fictional of course!

Murder at the Vicarage

★ 4.04

Agatha Christie

‘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

★ 4.2

Agatha Christie

Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the famous Orient Express in its tracks as it travels through the mountainous Balkans. 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.

One of the passengers is none other than detective Hercule Poirot. On vacation.

Isolated and with a killer on board, Poirot must identify the murderer—in case he or she decides to strike again.

Curtain

★ 4.1

Agatha Christie

Arthritic and immobilized, Poirot calls on his old friend Captain Hastings to join him at Styles to be the eyes and ears that will feed observations to Poirot's still razor sharp mind. Though aware of the criminal's identity, Poirot will not reveal it to the frustrated Hastings, and dubs the nameless personage 'X'. Already responsible for several murders, X, Poirot warns, is ready to strike again, and the partners must work swiftly to prevent imminent murder.

Poirot’s final case, a mystery which brings him and Hastings back to Styles where they first solved a crime together. The story was both anticipated and dreaded by Agatha Christie fans worldwide, many of whom still refuse to read it, as it is known to contain Poirot’s death.

Agatha Christie wrote it during World War II, as a gift for her daughter should she not survive the bombings, and it was kept in a safe for over thirty years. It was agreed among the family that Curtain would be published finally in 1975 by Collins, her long-standing publishers, and that Sleeping Murder (the Marple story written during the war for her husband, Max) would follow.

The reception of Poirot’s death was international, even earning him an obituary in The New York Times; he is still the only fictional character to have received such an honour. The first actor to take on the role of portraying Poirot in his final hours was David Suchet, as the final episode of the series Agatha Christie’s Poirot for which he’d been playing the role for twenty-five years. The episode was adapted in 2013.

A Murder Is Announced

★ 4.01

Agatha Christie

"A Murder is Announced" is a staple of crime fiction and often considered as the best Miss Marple novel. The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn, including Jane Marple who is staying nearby, are agog with curiosity over an advertisement in the local gazette which reads: ‘A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m.’ Is this a childish practical joke? Or a hoax intended to scare poor Letitia Blacklock? Unable to resist the mysterious invitation, a crowd gathers at Little Paddocks at the appointed time when, without warning, the lights go out…

The novel was promoted on both sides of the Atlantic as Agatha Christie's 50th book and published in 1950 by William Collins.

Librarian's note: this entry is for the novel, "A Murder is Announced." Collections and other Miss Marple stories are located elsewhere on Goodreads. The series includes 12 novels and 20 short stories. Entries for the short stories can be found by searching Goodreads for: "a Miss Marple Short Story."

The Body in the Library

More in Miss Marple Series

Murder at the Vicarage

The Moving Finger

A Murder Is Announced

4:50 from Paddington