Agatha Christie Books in Order: All 66 Novels by Year

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Agatha Christie published her first detective novel in 1920 and her last in 1976, and in between she wrote sixty-six of them. That number catches people out, because her official book list also holds short story collections, plays, six romances under a pen name, and three novels published under her own name decades after she died.

2026 is a good year to do it. It is fifty years since Christie’s death and since Sleeping Murder reached readers, and the British Library opens a major Christie exhibition on 30 October 2026. Below is every Christie book in order by first publication, which detective is in which, what is not part of the sixty-six, and where to begin. Spoiler-free throughout.

Agatha Christie Books in Order: All 66 Novels

Publication order, by the first-publication years on Christie’s official story index. Collaborations, the Westmacott romances and the continuation novels have their own sections below.

The 1920s (9 novels)

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). Poirot’s debut, written while Christie worked in a hospital dispensary — where she learned her poisons.
2. The Secret Adversary (1922). Introduces Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, two broke young friends who advertise themselves for hire.
3. The Murder on the Links (1923).
4. The Man in the Brown Suit (1924).
5. The Secret of Chimneys (1925). Introduces Superintendent Battle, the quiet Scotland Yard man who recurs in several later books.
6. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). The novel that made her famous and still divides readers a century later.
7. The Big Four (1927).
8. The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928).
9. The Seven Dials Mystery (1929).

The 1930s (17 novels)

Her most productive decade, and the source of most titles a non-reader can still name.

1. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930). Miss Marple’s first full-length case, and the first sight of St Mary Mead.
2. The Sittaford Mystery (1931).
3. Peril at End House (1932).
4. Lord Edgware Dies (1933). Published in the US as Thirteen at Dinner.
5. Murder on the Orient Express (1934). A snowbound train, a carriage full of suspects, and the solution everyone thinks they know.
6. Three Act Tragedy (1934).
7. Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (1934).
8. Death in the Clouds (1935). Published in the US as Death in the Air.
9. Cards on the Table (1936). Four detectives and four suspects at two bridge tables; her most elegant puzzle.
10. Murder in Mesopotamia (1936).
11. The ABC Murders (1936).
12. Death on the Nile (1937).
13. Dumb Witness (1937). Serialised in the US as Poirot Loses a Client.
14. Appointment with Death (1938).
15. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1938). Her country-house Christmas mystery, and the one to save for December.
16. Murder Is Easy (1938).
17. And Then There Were None (1939). Ten strangers, an island and no detective at all — the best-selling crime novel ever written.

The 1940s (13 novels)

Written through the war, much of it in London while she worked again as a dispenser. Two more were written in this decade and held back — see 1975 and 1976.

1. Evil Under the Sun (1940).
2. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940).
3. Sad Cypress (1940).
4. N or M? (1941). Tommy and Tuppence, middle-aged and desperate to be useful, hunt enemy agents in a seaside boarding house.
5. Five Little Pigs (1942). A sixteen-year-old murder reconstructed from five conflicting memories; many readers rate it her finest.
6. The Body in the Library (1942).
7. The Moving Finger (1942).
8. Death Comes as the End (1944). Set in Ancient Egypt, and the only historical novel she wrote.
9. Towards Zero (1944).
10. Sparkling Cyanide (1945).
11. The Hollow (1946). Published in the US as Murder after Hours.
12. Taken at the Flood (1948). Published in the US as There Is a Tide.
13. Crooked House (1949).

The 1950s (12 novels)

1. A Murder Is Announced (1950). A newspaper advertisement announces a murder at a given time and place, and the village turns up to watch.
2. They Came to Baghdad (1951).
3. Mrs McGinty’s Dead (1952).
4. They Do It with Mirrors (1952). Published in the US as Murder with Mirrors.
5. A Pocket Full of Rye (1953).
6. After the Funeral (1953). Published in the US as Funerals Are Fatal.
7. Destination Unknown (1954).
8. Hickory Dickory Dock (1955).
9. Dead Man’s Folly (1956).
10. 4.50 from Paddington (1957). A woman sees a murder from a passing train, and only Miss Marple believes her.
11. Ordeal by Innocence (1958).
12. Cat Among the Pigeons (1959).

The 1960s (9 novels)

1. The Pale Horse (1961).
2. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962).
3. The Clocks (1963).
4. A Caribbean Mystery (1964).
5. At Bertram’s Hotel (1965).
6. Third Girl (1966).
7. Endless Night (1967). A standalone told in the first person, unlike anything else she wrote.
8. By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968).
9. Hallowe’en Party (1969). The Poirot novel behind the 2023 film A Haunting in Venice.

The 1970s (6 novels)

1. Passenger to Frankfurt (1970).
2. Nemesis (1971). Follows directly on from A Caribbean Mystery, so read that one first.
3. Elephants Can Remember (1972).
4. Postern of Fate (1973). The last novel Christie wrote, and Tommy and Tuppence’s fourth and final case.
5. Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case (1975). Written during the Second World War and held back for thirty years. Poirot’s final case — read it last.
6. Sleeping Murder (1976). Also written in the 1940s, published after Christie’s death. Miss Marple’s farewell, fifty years old this year.

A note on years. These follow the official site’s story index. A few are contested: the index dates Evil Under the Sun to 1940, while the site’s own page for the book refers to its release in June 1941. UK and US editions often appeared a year apart, which is why two careful lists can give the same novel two dates. Curtain and Sleeping Murder sit at the end because that is when they were published; both were written in the 1940s.

Which Detective Is in Which Books

The detectives are the only real thread running through the sixty-six.

• Hercule Poirot — 33 novels, from The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) to Curtain (1975), plus five short story collections and a play.
• Miss Marple — 12 novels, from The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) to Sleeping Murder (1976), plus twenty short stories — our guide to the Miss Marple books in order breaks those down.
• Tommy and Tuppence — 4 novels: The Secret Adversary (1922), N or M? (1941), By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968) and Postern of Fate (1973). They are the only Christie characters who age in real time, from their twenties to their seventies, which makes these four the one set worth reading in order.
• Standalones — 17 novels, with no series detective at all. Some of her boldest work sits here: And Then There Were None, Crooked House, Endless Night, Ordeal by Innocence.

Superintendent Battle and Colonel Race recur across several books, and the novelist Ariadne Oliver — Christie’s sketch of herself — turns up alongside Poirot more than once.

Books Under Her Name That Are Not Part of the 66

Christie’s official index lists more than sixty-six novels. This is why.

• Six novels as Mary Westmacott, published between 1930 and 1956: Giant’s Bread, Unfinished Portrait, Absent in the Spring, The Rose and the Yew Tree, A Daughter’s a Daughter and The Burden. They are novels about love and family, not crime.
• Three Detection Club collaborations — The Floating Admiral (1931), Ask a Policeman (1933) and Six Against the Yard (1936) — in which Christie wrote one part and other Golden Age writers the rest.
• Three novel versions of her stage plays, published in 1998, 1999 and 2000, decades after her death: Black Coffee, The Unexpected Guest and Spider’s Web. The plays are hers; these novelisations were written from her scripts by another hand.
• Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, listed on the official index as a novel but really a long story, which Christie expanded into Dead Man’s Folly (1956); it only appeared as a standalone book decades later.

The Continuation Novels

New Christie novels are still published with the estate’s approval. Not Christie’s writing, but authorised. The Poirot ones run to six books by Sophie Hannah:

1. The Monogram Murders (2014)
2. Closed Casket (2016)
3. The Mystery of Three Quarters (2018)
4. The Killings at Kingfisher Hill (2020)
5. Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night (2023)
6. The Last Death of the Year (2025)

And as of 2026 Miss Marple has one too: Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel (2026), written by Lucy Foley. There is also Marple: Twelve New Mysteries (2022), authorised Marple stories by twelve crime writers.

Where to Start with Agatha Christie

Sixty-six books is a wall, not a doorway. Four ways in:

• For the famous twist: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). Read it before someone spoils it.
• For the village and the knitting: The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) or A Murder Is Announced (1950). This is the branch that most modern cozy mysteries grew from.
• For the one everybody has heard of: Murder on the Orient Express (1934) or Death on the Nile (1937) — closed circle, exotic setting, Poirot at full stretch.
• For the thriller: And Then There Were None (1939). No detective, no comfort, and nothing cozy about it.

If the village end suits you, our cozy mysteries for beginners guide picks up where Christie leaves off, and the Agatha Raisin books in order are her most direct modern descendant. For Hercule Poirot’s Christmas weather, see our Christmas cozy mysteries list.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many books did Agatha Christie write?

Sixty-six detective novels, plus more than a dozen short story collections, around twenty plays, two volumes of autobiography and six novels as Mary Westmacott.

Do you have to read Agatha Christie’s books in order?

No. Almost every novel is a self-contained case, and she wrote them that way on purpose. Four things are worth respecting: Curtain last among the Poirots, Sleeping Murder last among the Marples, A Caribbean Mystery before Nemesis, and the four Tommy and Tuppence books in sequence, because those two really do grow old.

What is the best Agatha Christie book to start with?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd if you want to understand why she mattered, And Then There Were None if you want to be unable to put it down, and The Murder at the Vicarage if you want a village, a vicar and a nosy neighbour.

Why do some Agatha Christie books have two different titles?

American publishers routinely retitled her novels. Lord Edgware Dies became Thirteen at Dinner, Death in the Clouds became Death in the Air, After the Funeral became Funerals Are Fatal, Taken at the Flood became There Is a Tide, The Hollow became Murder after Hours and They Do It with Mirrors became Murder with Mirrors. Several others were renamed too; if a title above draws a blank in a US catalogue, search the author plus the year.

One Last Thing

Fifty years after her death Christie still outsells almost everyone, and not because of the twists: she worked out early that a murder is most unsettling where everybody knows everybody. Every cozy mystery on this site stands on that idea.

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 Christie you read first.

Sources

Titles and first-publication years on this page follow the estate’s official complete 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.