“Outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap.” —AgathaChristie.com (which we highly recommended for Agatha Christie Trivia!)
Agatha Christie at her home in 1950. Credit: Popperfoto, via Getty Images
When we think about mysteries, what authors come to mind? Certainly Agatha Christie should be the very first one! As the best-selling novelist of all time, with billions of copies of her books sold in English and in translation, Christie has become a staple in the mystery genre. And that’s why Skyboat is so excited to celebrate THREE audiobooks now in the Skyboat catalog, in partnership with Blackstone Publishing.
Skyboat Media is proud to partner with Blackstone Publishing to produce and publish top-quality audiobooks of classic or little-known texts, ensuring these stories remain accessible to broad audiences.
Born in Torquay in 1890, Christie began writing short stories as a young woman, but her writing career would not take off until after the First World War. While working at a hospital dispensary during the war, Christie learned enough about medicine and poisons and antidotes to complete an examination by the Society of Apothecaries … and enough to write some of the most famous poisonings in all of fiction! She was also inspired by the Belgian refugees throughout the English countryside, and thus our favorite Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, was born.
No one hit wonder, Christie then went on to create even more iconic characters in mystery and detective fiction including Tommy and Tuppence, Miss Marple, and Colonel Race. We are delighted to welcome Dame Agatha Christie to Skyboat’s Classic Mystery Library.
Blackstone Publishing and Skyboat Media present some of Christie’s finest work, including the first appearances of Colonel Race and, of course, the mustachioed detective who has delighted and captivated generations of readers, Hercule Poirot.
Agatha Christie is a writer of many talents. It is fitting that our own fearless leader, the multi-talented Gabrielle de Cuir helmed all our entire trio of Agatha Christie projects, while wearing many hats herself, including narrating, producing, and directing! For the Hercule Poirot series, Gabrielle directed the one and only John Rubinstein in THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES. Gabrielle joined John as a narrator for THE MURDER ON THE LINKS in dramatized dialogue directed by Cassandra de Cuir.
For our first foray into the Colonel Race series, Gabrielle narrated the bulk of the audiobook, along with some help from John Lee (a bonafide Brit and an Audie Award winning narrator to boot!) bringing Sir Eustace Pedler to life in THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT.
And we are not the only ones enamored with this narrator combination. THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT has garnered an AudioFile Earphones Award and is a 2022 Audies Finalist in the Mystery category. Congratulations Gabrielle and John!
“While this mystery was first published in 1924, narrators Gabrielle de Cuir and John Lee enliven the characters through their fresh, well-paced, pitch-perfect performances… De Cuir’s portrayal of Beddingfield projects a feisty character whom listeners will cheer for. John Lee masterfully delivers extracts from the diary of the imperious Sir Eustace Pedlar, MP… De Cuir and Lee expertly shepherd listeners through Christie’s magic with perfectly timed twists and turns.”
–Excerpts from AudioFile Magazine Review of THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT, Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award & a 2022 Audies Finalist
–Excerpts from AudioFile Magazine Review of THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT, Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award & a 2022 Audies Finalist
“Mon ami, two people rarely see the same thing.” –Hercule Poirot, The Murder on the Links
While there might be many different versions of Agatha Christie audiobooks out there, you have never heard them like this. Trust us.
On writing THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES: “As I walked I muttered to myself, enacting the chapter that I was next going to write; speaking as John to Mary, and as Mary to John; as Evelyn to her employer, and so on. I became quite excited by this. I would come home, have dinner, fall into bed and sleep for about twelve hours. Then I would get up and write passionately again all morning”– An Autobiography, Agatha Christie
THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES (Hercule Poirot Mystery, Book 1)
Read by John Rubinstein
Directed by Gabrielle de Cuir
Agatha Christie’s debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, features the first appearance of the eccentric Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.
Poirot must use his unusual methods and his singular charm to solve the murder of the rich, elderly Emily Inglethorpe. Fortunately, Poirot’s old friend Arthur Hastings happens to be staying at Styles Court, an Essex country manor, at the time of the murder, and he is a ready right-hand man during Poirot’s investigation.
With suspects abound, Poirot employs all his wits to determine who did the deed. Could it have been Mrs. Inglethorpe’s much younger husband? Or perhaps her resentful stepsons? The family friend working as her nurse is not free of suspicion, nor is her maid of many years. It may even have been the poisons specialist who just so happens to be staying in a nearby village.
Everyone staying at Styles has secrets they are trying to keep, but Poirot cuts through these deceptions with the resourcefulness, exactitude, and attention to detail that has made him one of the most intriguing figures in literary history.
“The plot has peculiar complications and the reader will have to be very astute indeed if he guesses who the criminal is until the last complexity has been unravelled.” –The New York Times Book Review
THE MURDER ON THE LINKS (Hercule Poirot Mystery)
Read by John Rubinstein, with Gabrielle de Cuir
Dialogue directed by Cassandra de Cuir
Not one, but two dead bodies are discovered on a French golf course, leaving Hercule Poirot to unravel a grisly conundrum.
Hercule Poirot receives an urgent cry for help from a client summoning him to France. But he is too late, and arrives to find his client facedown in a shallow grave on a golf course, brutally stabbed to death, and dressed in a too-large overcoat with an impassioned love letter in the pocket.
With a long line of suspects including the victim’s wife, his embittered son, and his mistress, Poirot works to unravel the mystery.
But before Poirot can discover the meaning of the clues, a second, identically murdered corpse is found …
“The book, like all Miss Christie’s work, is written with spirit and humour.” —The Observer
THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT (The Colonel Race Series, Book 1)
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir, with John Lee as Sir Eustace Pedler
2022 Audies Finalist
When the recently orphaned Anne Beddingfield moves to London to live with her late father’s solicitor and his wife, she is ready for adventure to find her, and find her it most certainly does.
While waiting for the Tube after a failed job interview, Anne witnesses a man fall off the Underground platform onto the rails. The police determine the man’s death to be “accidental”. But the examining doctor fortuitously leaves behind a rather curious note on his way out of the station, and Anne makes the life-altering decision to investigate this “accidental” death on her own. Suddenly, Anne finds herself ensnared in a dangerous plot involving missing diamonds, a murdered ballerina, and even an attempt on her own life.
The Man in the Brown Suit also features the first appearance of Colonel Race, a friend of Agatha Christie’s famous Detective Hercule Poirot, and an excellent investigator in his own right. To save herself and solve this mystery, Anne must work with Colonel Race and journey all the way to Africa. Together, they are determined to crack the case and unmask the killer, an international criminal mastermind known only as “the Colonel”, once and for all.
THE SECRET ADVERSARY (The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries: Book 1)
Read by Paul Boehmer and Gabrielle de Cuir with Stefan Rudnicki
Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused.
Tommy Beresford and Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley are young, in love … and flat broke. Restless for excitement and facing a shortage of job opportunities in postwar London, they decide to embark on a daring business scheme: Young Adventurers Ltd.—“willing to do anything, go anywhere.”
But they get more than they bargained for when their first assignment leads them into a series of increasingly dangerous situations involving international spies, a society beauty, a Russian count, the wreck of the RMS Lusitania, an amnesia patient, an American millionaire, and a fiendishly clever archcriminal known only as “Mr. Brown.”
Dame Agatha Christie’s second novel is the first in a series that spanned her career as a writer, and she has said that the Tommy and Tuppence mysteries were the stories she enjoyed writing the most. With a special, dramatized reading by Gabrielle de Cuir and Paul Boehmer, and featuring Stefan Rudnicki as “Carter,” you will soon see why!
THE SECRET OF CHIMNEYS (The Superintendent Battle Series: Book 1
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Read by Gabrielle de Cuir
Intrigue, espionage, mystery, and murder collide at a British country home in this captivating thriller from Agatha Christie.
Eager to leave his job as a tour guide in Africa, international vagabond Anthony Cade meets an old acquaintance, Jimmy McGrath, who offers him a small sum to dispatch an errand in England. McGrath is in possession of the memoirs of the recently deceased Count Stylptitch, former Prime Minister of the Balkan state of Herzoslovakia—a man deemed a dictator, a patriot, or a statesman, depending on which newspaper you prefer. His task is to deliver the count’s manuscript to a certain firm of publishers in London and receive payment. Little does Cade suspect that a seemingly simple job will drop him right in the middle of an international conspiracy.
Just as the discovery of oil in Herzoslovakia creates extreme political turmoil between the nation’s republican and royalist factions, Prince Michael, presumed heir to the throne of Herzoslovakia, is found murdered at a party at Chimneys, the historic home of Lord Caterham, where Cade happens to be a fellow attendee. Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard arrives to lead the investigation, and although young Cade is cleared of suspicion, he has quite the role to play in the fallout of this assassination …
As much a murder mystery as it is a treasure hunt, the tale is chock-full of impersonators, inspectors, riddles, and intrigue. Superintendent Battle, and the spirited “it” girl in the character of Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent, are introduced into Christie’s canon for the first time in The Secret of Chimneys, a first-class romp and one of her best early thrillers.
POIROT INVESTIGATES (The Hercule Poirot Mysteries) 
Read by John Rubinstein
“With method and logic one can accomplish anything!”
―Agatha Christie, Poirot Investigates
An American starlet with a mysterious diamond, a suicide that may be more than it appears, an impossibly cheap flat, a locked room murder, a million dollar robbery, an ancient pharaoh’s curse, a precious stolen jewel, a political abduction, a disappeared banker, a phone call form a dying man, and a missing will … Who could possibly solve such varied, gruesome, and dastardly crimes? None other than Agatha Christie’s beloved Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot!
Poirot Investigates is the very first collection of short stories featuring Poirot. These eleven stories are filled to bursting with Poirot’s trademark wit and incredible skills of deduction, and each story will leave you guessing until the very end.
Full Contents:
1. “The Adventure of ‘The Western Star’”
2. “The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor”
3. “The Adventure of the Cheap Flat”
4. “The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge”
5. “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery”
6. “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb”
7. “Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan”
8. “The Kidnapped Prime Minister”
9. “The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim”
10. “The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman”
11. “The Case of the Missing Will”
THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD by Agatha Christie
Read by John Lee, with John Rubinstein as Hercule Poirot
A Paris Le Monde Pick of the 100 Top Books of the Twentieth Century
“What one does not tell to Papa Poirot he finds out.”
In Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Hercule Poirot comes out of retirement to solve one of the most vexing cases of his career. The quiet village of King’s Abbot is still reeling from the death of the widow Ferrars from an overdose of Veronal, when not twenty-four hours later it is learned that the man she planned to marry, Roger Ackroyd, has been brutally murdered.
Prior to his death, Ackroyd had been reading an article in the Evening Post to discover who had been blackmailing his wife over poisoning her first husband. But before he could learn who the blackmailer was, he was stabbed through the neck in his own study.
Hercule Poirot is the only man with the “little grey cells” to solve this convoluted crime. This time however, it is not Hastings along for the ride. It is Dr. James Shepard, a man actually living in the small village, and one of the men to actually find Ackroyd’s body, who relates to us the terrible truths of the crime and the great deductions of our beloved Belgian detective.
See why the British Crime Writers’ Association voted The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as the “Best Crime Novel of All Time”!
THE BIG FOUR: THE ORIGINAL 12 STORIES by Agatha Christie
Read by John Rubinstein, with Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki
“If one man does not make a move, the other must, and by permitting the adversary to make the attack one learns something about him.”
In The Big Four, Hercule Poirot investigates a string of murders that appear to be disconnected on the surface, but Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective sees the only tiny detail that links them all together. For some obscure reason that Poirot is determined to uncover, the number four keeps popping up with every killing. Poirot soon learns that there is in fact an international crime gang dubbed “The Big Four,” and he sets off after them. With Hastings once again at his side, Monsieur Poirot travels all over Europe to find them, but the pair are always seem to be a step behind this shadowy syndicate.
This audiobook features the original twelve linked stories as they first appeared in The Sketch periodical, before Christie re-worked them with her brother-in-law to create the novel, The Big Four. Originally titled The Man Who Was Number Four: Further of Adventures of M. Poirot, this collection not only sees the return of Hastings and Inspector Japp, but it also introduced to the world Achille Poirot, the identical twin of Hercule Poirot himself!
Featuring original advertisements from The Sketch, and an introduction by Gabrielle de Cuir.
Full Contents:
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- “The Unexpected Guest”
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2. “The Adventure of the Dartmoor Bungalow”
3. “The Lady on the Stairs”
4. “The Radium Thieves”
5. “In the House of the Enemy”
6. “The Yellow Jasmine Mystery”
7. “The Chess Problem”
8. “The Baited Trap”
9. “The Adventures of the Peroxide Blonde”
10. “The Terrible Catastrophe”
11. “The Dying Chinaman”
12. “The Crag in the Dolomites”
Purchase your copies of THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES (Hercule Poirot Mystery, Book 1), THE MURDER ON THE LINKS (Hercule Poirot Mystery), THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT (The Colonel Race Series, Book 1), THE SECRET ADVERSARY (The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries: Book 1), THE SECRET OF CHIMNEYS (The Superintendent Battle Series: Book 1), POIROT INVESTIGATES (The Hercule Poirot Mysteries), THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD (Hercule Poirot Mystery), and THE BIG FOUR: THE ORIGINAL 12 STORIES (Hercule Poirot Mystery) today.
