Crooked House & Endless Night Lib/E

Product Description<br/><br/><br/>Here are two stand-alone novels from the queen of mystery, Agatha Christie. From the sprawling Leonide family to dark moors, no one can spin a mystery quite like she can.<br/>Crooked House<br/>The Leonides are one big happy family living in a sprawling, ramshackle mansion-that is, until the head of the household, Aristide, is murdered with a fatal barbiturate injection. Suspicion naturally falls on the old man's young widow, fifty years his junior. But the murderer has reckoned without the tenacity of Charles Hayward, fiance of the late millionaire's granddaughter.<br/>Endless Night<br/>Strapped by a chauffeur's wages, Michael Rogers is in want of a better life that seems out of reach. Especially elusive is a magnificent piece of property in Kingston Bishop-until a chance meeting with a beautiful heiress makes his dreams possible. Marrying her is the first step, and building the perfect home is the next. Unfortunately, Michael ignored the local warnings about the deadly curse buried in the tract of land, and living out his dreams may exact a higher price than he ever imagined.<br/>Endless Night was praised as one of Agatha Christie's most unusual forays into gothic, psychological suspense. A novel of fate, chance, and the nature of evil was a personal favorite of the author's as well.<br/><br/><br/>Review<br/><br/><br/>Endless Night, [is] quite different in tone from her usual work. It is impossible to say much about the story without giving away vital secrets: sufficient to warn the reader that if he should think this is a romance he couldn't be more mistaken, and the crashing, not to say horrific suspense at the end is perhaps the most devastating that this surpriseful author has ever brought off. -- "Guardian (London) on Endless Night"<br/><br/><br/>Chief Inspector Taverner of Scotland Yard was as brilliant as usual but barking up the wrong tree-as Agatha Christie demonstrates in a surprise ending which introduces a novel idea in murder mystery. -- " Toronto Daily Star on Crooked House "<br/><br/><br/>Her forty-ninth book and one of her best seven. Poisoning of aged iniquitous anglicized Levantine millionaire. Nicely characterized family of suspects. Delicious red herrings. Infinite suspense and [a] shocking surprise finish. -- "Observer (London) on Crooked House"<br/><br/><br/>It really is bold of Agatha Christie to write in the persona of a working-class boy who marries a poor little rich girl, but in a pleasantly gothic story of gypsy warnings she brings it all off, together with a nicely melodramatic final twist. -- "Times Literary Supplement on Endless Night "<br/><br/><br/>About the Author<br/><br/><br/>Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was a British crime writer best known for her detective novels and short stories. According to Guinness World Records, she is the best-selling novelist of all time, her novels having sold over four billion copies and having been translated into more than one hundred languages. The Agatha Award for best mystery and crime writers was named in her honor.<br/><br/><br/>Hugh Fraser, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, is an English actor and theater director who is best known for his portrayal of Captain Hastings in the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot. He studied acting at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and is an associate tutor, director, and member of the audition panel at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, specializing in Shakespeare.