Agatha Christie bibliography
Agatha Christie was an English crime novelist, short-story writer and playwright. Her reputation rests on 66 detective novels and 15 short-story collections that have sold over two billion copies, an amount surpassed only by the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare. She is also the most translated individual author in the world with her books having been translated into more than 100 languages. Her works contain several regular characters with whom the public became familiar, including Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Parker Pyne and Harley Quin. Christie wrote more Poirot stories than any of the others, even though she thought the character to be "rather insufferable". Following the publication of the 1975 novel Curtain, Poirot's obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times.
She married Archibald Christie in December 1914, but the couple divorced in 1928. After he was sent to the Western Front in the First World War, she worked with the Voluntary Aid Detachment and in the chemist dispensary, giving her a working background knowledge of medicines and poisons. Christie's writing career began during the war, after she was challenged by her sister to write a detective story; she produced The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which was turned down by two publishers before being published in 1920. Following the limited success of the novel, she continued to write and steadily built up a fan base. She went on to write over a hundred works, including further novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and two autobiographies. She also wrote six romantic novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
One of Christie's plays, The Mousetrap, opened in West End theatre in 1952, and ran continuously until 16 March 2020, when the stage performances had to be temporarily discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic. It then re-opened on 17 May 2021. In 2025, the London run exceeded 30,000 performances.
In September 2015, a public vote identified And Then There Were None as the public's favourite Christie novel; the book was the writer's favourite, and the one she found most difficult to write.
In September 1930, Christie married the archaeologist Max Mallowan. The pair travelled frequently on archaeological expeditions, and she used the experiences she had while on her many adventures as a basis for some plots, including Murder on the Orient Express, Murder in Mesopotamia, Death on the Nile and Appointment with Death. She also wrote the autobiographical travel book Come, Tell Me How You Live, which described their life in Syria. Her biographer, Janet Morgan, reports that "archaeologists have celebrated ... contribution to Near Eastern exploration". Christie died in 1976, her reputation as a crime novelist high.
Novels
Initially in chronological order by UK publication date, even when the book was published first in the US or serialised in a magazine in advance of publication in book form.Short fiction collections
Many of Christie's stories first appeared in journals, newspapers and magazines. This list consists of the published collections of stories, in chronological order by UK publication date, even when the book was published first in the US or serialised in a magazine in advance of publication in book form.List of short stories
A total of 166 stories have been written and published in 15 collections in the US and the UK. 165 stories were published in the UK, with the omission of "Three Blind Mice." The 12 original short stories that were used for The Big Four were published in the UK in 2017. 154 other stories were published in the US. Some stories were published under different names in the US collections.Four short stories, including "The Submarine Plans," "Christmas Adventure," "The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest," and "The Second Gong," were expanded into longer stories by Christie.
UK collections
This is a list of 166 stories sorted by the 15 UK collections in chronological order.US collections
There are 14 US collections, excluding Poirot's Early Cases, since all of its eighteen stories appeared in earlier collections, and The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural and Midwinter Murder, which each include only one previously unavailable Christie story.| Year | US collection | Number of stories |
| 1925 | Poirot Investigates | 14 |
| 1929 | Partners in Crime | 15 |
| 1930 | The Mysterious Mr Quin | 12 |
| 1932 | The Tuesday Club Murders | 13 |
| 1934 | Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective | 12 |
| 1937 | Dead Man's Mirror | 4 |
| 1939 | The Regatta Mystery | 9 |
| 1947 | The Labors of Hercules | 12 |
| 1948 | The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories | 11 |
| 1950 | Three Blind Mice and Other Stories | 9 |
| 1951 | The Under Dog and Other Stories | 9 |
| 1961 | Double Sin and Other Stories | 8 |
| 1971 | The Golden Ball and Other Stories | 15 |
| 1997 | The Harlequin Tea Set | 9 |
Collaborative Prose Fiction
| Title | Year of first publication | First edition publisher | Category | Notes |
| Ask a Policeman | Arthur Barker | Novel | Part 1 of The Detection Club trilogy | |
| The Scoop and Behind the Screen | Victor Gollancz | Mystery novellas | With members of The Detection Club | |
| John Day | Mystery stories | Editor, with others |
Miscellany
| Title | Year of first publication | First edition publisher | Category | Notes |
| Geoffrey Bles | Poetry | |||
| Come, Tell Me How You Live | William Collins & Sons | Autobiographical travel book | Under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan | |
| Star Over Bethlehem | William Collins & Sons | Poetry and short stories | Under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan | |
| Poems | William Collins & Sons | Poetry | ||
| Agatha Christie: An Autobiography | William Collins & Sons | Autobiography | ||
| The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery | Letters |
Broadcast works
Several of Christie's works have been adapted for stage and screen; the following is a list of only those works written by her on her own or as a member of a group.| Title | First performance | Date of first performance | Type of work | Notes | |
| Behind The Screen | BBC Radio | Radio play | Written together with Hugh Walpole, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, E. C. Bentley and Ronald Knox of The Detection Club. | ||
| BBC Radio | Radio play | Written together with Dorothy L. Sayers, E. C. Bentley, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts and Clemence Dane of The Detection Club. | |||
| Wasp's Nest | BBC Television | Television play | |||
| BBC Radio | Radio play | ||||
| Three Blind Mice | BBC Radio | Radio play | |||
| Butter in a Lordly Dish | BBC Radio | Radio play | |||
| Personal Call | BBC Radio | Radio play |
Stage works
The definitive study of Agatha Christie's stage plays is Curtain Up: Agatha Christie, a Life in Theatre by Julius Green.| Title | Location of first performance | Date of first performance | Year of publication | Publisher | Notes |
| Black Coffee | Embassy Theatre | Ashley | Novelised by Charles Osborne in 1998 as Black Coffee | ||
| Ten Little Niggers | St James's Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | Based on the 1939 novel Ten Little Niggers; also known as Ten Little Indians and And Then There Were None. | ||
| Appointment with Death | Piccadilly Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | Based on the 1938 novel Appointment with Death | ||
| Murder on the Nile | Wimbledon Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | Based on the 1937 novel Death on the Nile; a revised version—published as Murder on the Nile—was produced at Ambassadors Theatre on 19 March 1946 | ||
| Fortune Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | Based on the 1946 novel The Hollow. | |||
| Ambassadors Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | the play was still running. In March 2025 the London run exceeded 30,000 performances. | |||
| Witness for the Prosecution | Winter Garden Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | Based upon the 1925 short story "The Witness for the Prosecution" | ||
| Spider's Web | Savoy Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | Novelised by Charles Osborne in 2000 as Spider's Web | ||
| Towards Zero | St James's Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | With Gerald Verner; based on the novel Towards Zero | ||
| Verdict | Strand Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | |||
| Duchess Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | Novelised by Charles Osborne in 1999 as The Unexpected Guest | |||
| Go Back for Murder | Duchess Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | Based on the novel Five Little Pigs | ||
| Rule of Three | Duchess Theatre | Samuel French Ltd. | Contains three works: Afternoon at the Sea-side, The Patient and The Rats | ||
| Fiddlers Three | Kings Theatre, Southsea | ||||
| Akhnaton | New York | William Collins & Sons | First produced under the title Akhnaton and Nefertiti. | ||
| Chimneys | Pitlochry Festival Theatre Company | Unpublished. Written in 1931 and forgotten until the early 1980s when the script was discovered in the British Library Archive. Its existence was suppressed for 20 years at the request of Christie's daughter, but eventually came to light when it was discovered by another researcher who was unaware of the request. The play was unperformed until 2006. Based on the 1925 novel The Secret of Chimneys. | |||
| The Lie | Paignton, Devon | Unpublished. Written in the 1920s and discovered by Julius Green in the Christie archive while doing research for Curtain Up. |
| The Conqueror | One act play |
| Teddy Bear | One act play |
| Eugenia and Eugenics | One act play |
| The Clutching Hand | Full-length play. Adapted from: The Exploits of Elaine, a novel by Arthur B. Reeve |
| The Last Seance | One act play |
| Ten Years | One act play |
| Marmalade Moon | One act play |
| Someone at the Window | Full-length play. Adapted from Agatha Christie's short story "The Dead Harlequin" |
| Miss. Perry | Full-length play |
| Bleak House | Full-length movie script. Adapted from the Charles Dickens novel |