** Shortlisted for the @CrimeFest H.R.F. Keating Award ** A smart and highly entertaining portrait of a literary powerhouse - THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR A riveting portrait - GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR *** Christie lovers should read this biography for the same reason they read her novels. - The Times A model of how to combine biographical information, analysis and literary criticism into a propulsive narrative - Daily Telegraph Worsleys book excels in bringing a broader historical perspective to Christies life and work, and her enthusiasm is infectious. - Observer Ms Worsley herself writes engagingly... She combines an almost militant support for her subject with a considered analysis of her books and plays. - Economist Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was. Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was just an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasnt? As Lucy Worsley says, She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern. She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why - despite all the evidence to the contrary - did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? She was born in 1890 into a world which had its own rules about what women could and couldnt do. Lucy Worsleys biography is not just of an internationally renowned bestselling writer. Its also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman. With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsleys biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realise what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was - truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.