Audio Editions mystery masters | Park County Library System

Author

Sayers, Dorothy L. (Dorothy Leigh), 1893-1957

Earliest Publication Date

1923

Summary

Dorothy L. Sayers' first Lord Peter Wimsey tale introduces many of the author's best-known characters. Wimsey's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, rings her son with news of 'such a quaint thing'. She has heard through a friend that Mr Thipps, a respectable Battersea architect, found a dead man in his bath - wearing nothing but a gold prince-nez. Lord Wimsey makes his way straight over to Mr Thipps, and a good look at the body raises a number...

2) The murder of Roger Ackroyd

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1926

Summary

One of Agatha Christie's most famous novels, featuring her beloved detective Hercule Poirot--and her most surprising twist.The story that made Agatha Christie famous ends with one of her most dramatic twists. The villagers of King's Abbot are shocked when a wealthy local widow commits suicide and the very next day her fiancé, Roger Ackroyd, is stabbed to death. Dr. James Sheppard, the local physician, discovers the body of his friend and narrates...

3) The mystery of the blue train

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1928

Summary

"When the luxurious Blue Train arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake serene Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But she will never wake again--for a heavy blow has killed her, disfiguring her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her precious rubies are missing. The prime suspect is Ruth's estranged husband, Derek. Yet Hercule Poirot is not convinced, so he stages an eerie reenactment of the journey, complete with the murderer on board"--Page...

4) The Maltese falcon

Author

Hammett, Dashiell, 1894-1961

Earliest Publication Date

1929

Summary

In San Francisco in 1928, Sam Spade searches for a priceless statuette. He finds himself torn between loyalty to his murdered partner and an opportunity for personal gain.

5) The A.B.C. murders

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1935

Summary

Recognized as one of Christie's cleverest mysteries in the highly popular Poirot series. It is sure to be a success with her many avid fans. A serial killer is on the loose, murdering his victims in alphabetical order, leaving an ABC Railway Guide beside each body ... and also playing a game with Hercule Poirot, alerting him in advance to the location of the murders, but Poirot always arrives too late. Intrigued by the psychopath's mind and methodology,...

6) Evil under the sun

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1941

Summary

The beautiful bronzed body of Arlena Stuart lay facedown on the beach. But strangely, there was no sun and Arlena was not sunbathing...she had been strangled. Ever since Arlena's arrival the air had been thick with sexual tension. Each of the guests had a motive to kill her, including Arlena's new husband. But Hercule Poirot suspects that this apparent "crime of passion" conceals something much more evil. --from back cover

7) Death comes as the end

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1944

Summary

In Death Comes As the End, Dame Agatha Christie transports us back to ancient Egypt 2000 B.C. where a priest?s daughter, investigating a suspicious death, uncovers an asp?s nest of jealousy, betrayal, and serial murder. It is Egypt in 2000 BC, where death gives meaning to life. At the foot of a cliff lies the broken, twisted body of Nofret, concubine to a ka-priest. Young, beautiful, and venomous, most agree that it was fate?she deserved to die like...

8) And be a villain: a Nero Wolfe novel

Author

Stout, Rex, 1886-1975

Earliest Publication Date

1948

Summary

Madeline Fraser, radio talk show host extraordinaire, had a natural dread of dead air. So when one of her on-air guests signed off at the mike after drinking a glass of a sponsor’s beverage, it was a broadcaster’s nightmare come true. Enter Nero Wolfe. He agrees to take the case, with his sizable fee contingent on his solving the murder. But to Wolfe’s surprise, everyone connected to the case now lies in unison about it. And as the...

9) They came to Baghdad

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1951

Summary

Baghdad is holding a secret superpower summit, but the word is out, and an underground organization in the Middle East is plotting to sabatoge the talks. Into this explosive situation appears Victoria Jones, a young woman with a yearning for adventure who gets more than she bargains for when a wounded spy dies in her hotel room. The only man who can save the summit is dead. Can Victoria make sense of his dying words: Lucifer ... Basrah ... LeFarge...

10) Mrs. McGinty's dead

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1952

Summary

"Poirot investigates the murder of an old woman after her lodger is convicted of killing her and condemned to death because the investigating officer believes the man is innocent"-- Provided by publisher.

11) Destination unknown

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1955

Summary

When a number of leading scientists disappear without a trace, concern grows within the international intelligence community. And the one woman who appears to hold the key to the mystery is dying from injuries sustained in a plane crash. Meanwhile, in a Casablanca hotel room, Hilary Craven prepares to take her own life. But her suicide attempt is about to be interrupted by a man who will offer her an altogether more thrilling way to die....

12) The secret adversary

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1967

Summary

In 1919, young couple Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley form a partnership, hiring themselves out as "young adventurers". Their first case, however, is more of an adventure than they expect--working to find documents that, if they were known to the general public, would fuel a communist revolution in Britain. Undercover agents Tommy and Tuppence know that Jane Finn was carrying top secret documents when she disappeared five years ago. What they...

13) Hallowe'en party

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1969

Summary

A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples... At a Hallowe'en party, Joyce?a hostile thirteen-year-old?boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the 'evil presence'. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer...

14) Death in the clouds

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1970

Summary

A woman is killed by a poisoned dart in the enclosed confines of a commercial passenger plane? From seat No.9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No.13, sat a Countess with a poorly-concealed cocaine habit; across the gangway in seat No.8, a detective writer was being troubled by an aggressive wasp. What Poirot...

15) The body in the library

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1970

Summary

It's seven in the morning. The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing an evening dress and heavy makeup, 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 into their home to investigate. Amid rumors of scandal, she baits...

16) Elephants can remember

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1972

Summary

A classic Hercule Poirot investigation, Agatha Christie's Elephants Can Remember has the expert detective delving into an unsolved crime from the past involving the strange death of a husband and wife. Hercule Poirot stood on the clifftop. Here, many years earlier, there had been a fatal accident followed by the grisly discovery of two bodies, a husband and wife who had been shot dead. But who had killed whom? Was it a suicide pact? A crime of passion?...

17) Postern of fate

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1973

Summary

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford return in Agatha Christie?s classic Postern of Fate, to investigate a deadly poisoning sixty years after the fact. Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have just become the proud owners of an old house in an English village. Along with the property, they have inherited some worthless bric-a-brac, including a collection of antique books. While rustling through a copy of The Black Arrow, Tuppence comes upon a series of apparently...

18) Three act tragedy

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1973

Summary

Thirteen guests gather for drinks at actor Charles Cartwright's seaside escape. Benign Reverend Babbington, who rarely imbibes, takes one sip of his beverage and keels over dead. Soon after Sir Bartholomew Strange convenes the same party and meets his own end after swallowing port. One death could be natural, but two mean murder. Hercule Poirot, who was present at both affairs, stages a third soirée to catch the cocktail killer.

19) And then there were none

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1974

Summary

The world's best-selling mystery! "Ten..." Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen". "Nine..." At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead. "Eight..." Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one...one by one they begin to die. "Seven..." Who among them is...

20) Appointment with death

Author

Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976

Earliest Publication Date

1975

Summary

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sits the corpse of Mrs. Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist is the only sign of the fatal injection that killed her. With only twenty-four hours available to solve themystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he'd overheard back in Jerusalem: You see, don't you, that she's got to be killed? Mrs. Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he'd ever met.

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