Miss Marple Books in Order: All 12 Novels + 20 Short Stories

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St Mary Mead has a vicar, a chemist, a retired colonel, and an elderly lady at the end of the lane who notices absolutely everything. Jane Marple solved her first murder in print in 1930 and her last in 1976, and somewhere in those forty-six years she became the blueprint for nearly every village sleuth who came after her — including most of the cozy series we write about here.

This autumn is an unusually good moment to start her. 2026 marks fifty years since Agatha Christie’s death, the British Library opens a major Christie exhibition on 30 October 2026, and it is also fifty years since Sleeping Murder — Miss Marple’s final case — first reached readers. Below is every Miss Marple book in order: the twelve novels, all twenty short stories and where to actually find them, plus an honest answer about where to begin. Spoiler-free throughout.

Miss Marple Books in Order: All 12 Novels

Publication order, with first-publication years as given by Agatha Christie’s official site. Each entry is spoiler-free.

1. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930). Miss Marple’s first full-length case, narrated by the vicar of St Mary Mead, whose least-popular parishioner is shot dead in the vicar’s own study. It also introduces the village Christie would reuse for the next four decades, and the running joke the whole series rests on: nobody takes the old lady seriously until she turns out to have been right all along.
2. The Body in the Library (1942). A young woman in a spangled evening dress is found dead in the library at Gossington Hall, home of Miss Marple’s friends the Bantrys. Christie took the single most worn-out set-up in detective fiction and then made it work — which is exactly the kind of dare she enjoyed.
3. The Moving Finger (1942). A poison-pen letter campaign in a quiet town stops being a nuisance and turns fatal. Worth knowing before you open it: Miss Marple arrives late and stays briefly, so this is an odd place to meet her for the first time. Many readers nevertheless rank it among Christie’s best-written books.
4. A Murder Is Announced (1950). A notice in the local paper invites the village of Chipping Cleghorn to a murder at Little Paddocks, Friday at 6.30 p.m. Half the neighbourhood turns up expecting a parlour game. This is the most widely recommended Marple of all and makes an excellent second book.
5. They Do It with Mirrors (1952). Published in the United States as Murder with Mirrors. Miss Marple visits an old school friend whose grand house now operates as an institute for young offenders, and arrives convinced that something is being staged rather than something going wrong.
6. A Pocket Full of Rye (1953). A businessman is poisoned at his office desk, and there is a handful of grain in his jacket pocket. Miss Marple involves herself because she had trained the household’s young maid — and because she recognises the nursery rhyme the deaths keep insisting on following.
7. 4.50 from Paddington (1957). First published in the US as What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw! Miss Marple’s friend watches a murder committed through the window of a train running alongside her own, and nobody believes a word of it. Most of the legwork is delegated to the formidable Lucy Eyelesbarrow, which makes this the briskest and most entertaining of the later books.
8. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962). A film company takes over Gossington Hall, and a local woman dies at the welcome reception. The St Mary Mead of this book has a new housing estate and a supermarket, and Christie’s interest in how her village has changed is every bit as sharp as the puzzle. Filmed in 1980 as The Mirror Crack’d.
9. A Caribbean Mystery (1964). Her nephew packs her off to a West Indian resort to recuperate, where a retired major’s endless tall stories come to an abrupt stop. This is also where she meets the rich, rude, shrewd Mr Rafiel — remember him.
10. At Bertram’s Hotel (1965). A stay at a London hotel that has preserved Edwardian England a little too perfectly to be believable. The quietest of the twelve and the most atmospheric; the pleasure here is watching her register that the whole place is slightly wrong.
11. Nemesis (1971). Mr Rafiel, from A Caribbean Mystery, leaves Miss Marple an extraordinary bequest: an unnamed crime to investigate, with almost no instructions attached. Christie’s official site describes the two books as partners rather than a sequel, but read A Caribbean Mystery first and this one lands far harder.
12. Sleeping Murder (1976). Subtitled Miss Marple’s Last Case. A young woman buys a house on the south coast and finds she somehow already knows its layout. Christie wrote it years earlier and had the manuscript locked away to be published after her death; it appeared in 1976, the year she died. Save it for last — it was meant to be read that way.

Miss Marple Short Stories in Order (All 20)

The twenty short stories are the genuinely confusing part of the canon, because they are scattered across three British collections rather than gathered in one. Here is where each one lives.

1. The Thirteen Problems (1932) — 13 stories

A village dinner club takes turns presenting an unsolved case, and the quiet woman knitting in the corner keeps getting there first. These are the earliest Miss Marple stories of all: her debut, The Tuesday Night Club, ran in the Royal Magazine in December 1927, three years before the first novel. Older US editions also circulate under the title The Tuesday Club Murders.

2. “Greenshaw’s Folly” (1960) — 1 story

The odd one out. This single Marple story sits inside a collection headed by Hercule Poirot, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (Collins Crime Club, 1960); it had first run in the Daily Mail over five days in December 1956. If you are hunting the complete twenty, this is the story people miss.

3. Miss Marple’s Final Cases and Two Other Stories (1979) — 6 Marple stories

Published in Britain in October 1979, after Christie’s death, by the Collins Crime Club. Eight stories, of which six feature Miss Marple: Sanctuary, Strange Jest, Tape-Measure Murder, The Case of the Caretaker, The Case of the Perfect Maid and Miss Marple Tells a Story. The remaining two — The Dressmaker’s Doll and In a Glass Darkly — are not Marple at all. The book never got its own US edition, because most of the stories had already appeared in American magazines and anthologies, which is why American readers often own these six without realising they are a set.

Thirteen plus one plus six is twenty, which matches the count the Christie estate gives: twelve novels and twenty short stories. If chasing three collections sounds tiring, Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories gathers all twenty in a single volume and is the shortcut we would take.

Where to Start with Miss Marple

She is not a character who develops, so there is no arc to spoil and no wrong door — only better and worse ones.

• Start with The Murder at the Vicarage if you like meeting people properly. You get St Mary Mead, the Bantrys and the village’s low opinion of her, all of which pay off later.
• Start with A Murder Is Announced if you want the best puzzle first and will happily go back for the beginning afterwards.
• Don’t start with The Moving Finger, excellent as it is — she is barely in it.
• Read A Caribbean Mystery before Nemesis, and keep Sleeping Murder for the end.

If you enjoy her and want a modern village sleuth next, our guide to the Agatha Raisin books in order is the obvious follow-on, and Murder, She Wrote in order covers the American grande dame of the same tradition.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Miss Marple books are there?

Twelve novels and twenty short stories by Agatha Christie herself. A separate 2022 collection, Marple: Twelve New Mysteries, adds twelve authorised stories by other crime writers; it is listed on Christie’s official site but is not part of her own writing.

Do I need to read the Miss Marple books in order?

No. Every novel is a self-contained case and none of them depends on the last. The three exceptions are worth respecting anyway: begin with The Murder at the Vicarage, read A Caribbean Mystery before Nemesis, and finish with Sleeping Murder.

Why do some Miss Marple books have two different titles?

American publishers frequently retitled Christie’s novels. They Do It with Mirrors came out in the US as Murder with Mirrors, and 4.50 from Paddington as What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw! UK and US editions also sometimes appeared a year apart, which is why two reputable reading lists can give the same book two different years. The years above follow the official Agatha Christie site.

Is Miss Marple a cozy mystery?

She predates the label, but she wrote the template for it: an amateur sleuth, a small community everybody gossips about, violence kept firmly off the page, and a detective whose method is really just a lifetime of watching how people behave. Almost every cozy series on this site owes her something.

One Last Thing

Fifty years on from both Christie’s death and Sleeping Murder, Miss Marple is still the quietest and most ruthless detective in the genre — and if you are reading your way through the twelve this winter, we would love the company.

We post a cozy mystery series in reading order every week, plus new releases and seasonal reading lists. Come and join us on our Facebook Page and tell us which Marple you started with.

Sources

Titles and first-publication years on this page follow the estate’s official Miss Marple reading list (PDF) published by the Agatha Christie estate, alongside its official story list, which can be sorted by first publication. UK and US first editions sometimes carry different titles and years; we use the UK first edition. If anything here is out of date, tell us in the comments and we will fix it.