Dame agatha pulls out all the stops in this one.  A strange dreamy story of death and beauty.  The ends some will go to  for bea
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of their idea of it.  A series of murders takes place where Hercule Poirot's friend, Ariadne Oliver has been invited to a Halloween party for children.  It's up to Poirot to figure out the culprit and why the murders were done in order to save the life of a witness.
2401015
A young, naive woman who is the paid companion of an obnoxious rich woman is taken along to Monte Carlo. While she smarts under the rudeness and gauche behavior of her employer, she meets the dark, handsome widower Max de Winter.
What follows is a love story and a ghost story of a woman haunted by the powerful presence of the former mistress of Manderley.  We never learn the name of the heroine as she marries Max, moves into the rigid but elegant life at Manderley and tangles with Mrs. Danvers, Manderley's fearsome housekeeper. What unfolds is not only a mystery but a story of obsessions and evil. The end is a shock.
Du Maurier created an unforgettable atmosphere of decaying beauty, frightening spirits and horror mixed with love and death. If you haven't read this, I am envious. You get to experience it for the first time.
3997863
In the Forword, Agatha Christie wrote the Miss Marple shines brightest in short stories. I agree with her. At first, I had a hard time with the first several stories. They were so slow. However, as I continued reading the collection I was drawn into the dramas. The first 13 stories involve two different groups of friends who take turns telling a mystery to the others to solve. The only two characters which are in all thirteen stories are Miss Marple and Sir Henry. The other people try to sove the mystery after it is shared. Miss Marple always speaks last and is the only one to solve the mystery based on a village comparison.
  The rest of the short stories come from other collections of Christie stories. I especially enjoyed the story where the lawyer and his client come to her to help them figure out who killed the client's wife as he is about to be arrested.
  I would recommend this to all Miss Marple fans!
1551706
I have read many books by Agatha Christie and while this is not my favorite(Murder on the Orient Express) it is still a very good read.  It really peaked my interest about half way through and became a real page turner, or screen swiper as I read the entire last half of the book this afternoon.
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One of the best of the Poirot mysteries.  Great twist at the end. Certain elements of how the murder was done a bit far fetched,but par for the course in this genre. If you like Agatha Christie, though, you'll love this.
1037959
Somehow I had gotten these books out of order and had to go back and read this one.  For some reason I had confused it with a Nancy Atherton book; well, at least that is who I think it was.

After taking a break from Carsely and James Lacey, Agatha returns from her cruise with a few extra pounds and finds that she now has competition for James' affection and it's none other then a tall, beautiful, well put together woman by the name of Mary Fortune.

When Agatha finds that Mary has taken the gardening club by storm she sets out to beat her at her own game.  Since Agatha is not against cheating to win at all costs, remember the cake incident in the first book, she sets out to win both James and the gardening award.

When mysterious incidents start happening around Carsely and a curious murder occurs, it's up to Agatha, with the help of the wayward James, to solve the crimes and to find out how much Carsely really loves and appreciates Agatha.
2309986
this was a strange dreamy little movie, that left you feeling somewhat sedated.  after you had seen the film you couldn't help but wonder what it was all about really.  yet it lingered in your head for days.
4309036
Pauline West's writing has many poetic phrases that make you pause. The images she conjures force you to go back and want to engrave them indelibly in your mind.
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"Halloween Party" is one of the later Agatha Christie mysteries, first published in 1969, and is perhaps (to my reckoning at least) one of the last great mysteries that she wrote before time began to take its toll. Although there are a few cracks in the plot, "Halloween Party" is still a riveting murder mystery, with all the false leads, red herrings, plot twists and all-important "psychology" that are the hallmarks of a Poirot mystery.

Ariadne Oliver - a reoccurring character who closely resembles Christie herself - is reluctantly helping out at a children's Halloween party. Ariadne is the center of attention on this particular night considering her career as a writer of murder mysteries, and halfway through the festivities a young girl pipes up with an extraordinary statement: that she once witnessed a murder, though it wasn't until years later that she realized it *was* a murder. Since the girl is a renowned storyteller, the rest of the party dismisses her claims.

But by the end of the night, Joyce Reynolds has been drowned in the bobbing-for-apples bucket. A near-hysterical Ariadne calls up Hercule Poirot for help, and our favorite Belgian detective soon finds himself embroiled in another mystery. Poirot decides to take Joyce's claim that she once witnessed a murder seriously, and so asks his police contacts to dredge up any unsolved murder cases in the area that Joyce may have seen. There are four possible murders that Joyce might have witnessed, but as Poirot digs deeper into each one, he finds that things are more complex than he could have ever imagined.

What's striking about "Halloween Party" is its eerie, spooky atmosphere. Though it's set in the typical English village, there is a fairytale quality about it, particularly when Poirot explores a sunken garden in an old quarry that puts him in mind of Eden even as it puts him instinctively on edge. Frequented by a strange, unworldly little girl and rumored to be the site of a hidden well, Poirot can't help but feel that it holds the key to the most recent murder.

The suspects are more lightly sketched than usual (and the discerning reader will notice that Christie calls attention to the killers by exploring them in more detail), which means that there is less human interest than in her very best work, but "Halloween Party" still manages to impress with its winding plot and creepy ambiance. Because of the age of the murder victims, there is a genuinely chilling air to the story, and I was on tenterhooks waiting for the killer to be revealed before another innocent life was lost.

Also telling is the time period in which this was written. In many of her later books Christie expresses her bafflement with the youth culture of the 1960s, with a definite air of "back in my day..." griping. In this case she casts a stern glance on parenting standards, police procedure, fashion styles, and long hair. I actually blinked when the word "lesbian" came up. Suffice to say, Christie's later publications have lost a little bit of their charm, being written too recently for most readers to enjoy the nostalgic quality that was apparent in those set further back in the 1920s - 1940s.

But Poirot is in good form here and Ariadne is a hoot, particularly since her partiality for apples is severely put to the test. I'm far from completing Christie's entire canon of novels, but I wouldn't be surprised if "Halloween Party" ends up being in my top ten favorites.
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Somehow, THE LOVELY BONES is both haunting and beautiful at the same time. Alice Sebold has crafted a delicate tale of death and the after-life, as told by a young murdered girl observing her family's grief and the hunt for her killer from the heavens. It spans so many genres and should be a moving read for most readers. For a more traditional mystery that is also extremely well-written while dealing with the kidnap, rape and murder of a young girl, try Martha Powers' DEATH ANGEL. It focuses on the struggle of a mother to find her daughter's killer among a close-knit community that is suddenly full of suspects.
1820034
Agatha Christie at her best, and Miss Marple at her sharpest.  Great read.
973252
This is a strange book, meant by the author to be strange, I think.  It kept me in suspense as to the title until the end of the story. A surreal sequence of events set against a realistic background of the politics of both students & faculty in a Vermont boarding school.
Or perhaps the sequence of events is realistic and the boarding school lifestyle is surreal. A book worth reading.
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The story is about a woman who finds what she thinks she really wants, and then she finds what she really wants. This lush story makes you feel and smell Shanghai, HongKong, Cambodia. The  present is completed by the actions of the past; the mysteries (and there are multiples) unfold in layers, as complicated as the politics that thread through the story, and slide in and out of the complicated motives of everyone involved. This is a most satisfying story, well-drawn, quick moving. It is Agatha Christie and Pearl S. Buck, and museums and history and excitement. Enjoy the read!
2670101
Filled with Alice in Wonderland allusions, This is the Way the World Ends is as fascinating as it is peculiar. The narrative bogs down some in the middle, but the story was interesting enough it kept me reading.
4811960
This is a good story, full of intrigue, murder, kidnapping, ugliness, gambling, greed,, gee just about everything.  It makes you sit back and question  alot about life and truth.  Plus it has an ending you won't believe.
457328
Do yourself a favor and put up with the slow first half of this book. Bentley Little manages to build a very weird story up to the point where you have to keep on reading and get to the end. If you've ever seen a freaky movie and thought it was not a normal scare, but so weird that it worked because it freaked you out, then read this because it accomplishes the same thing. A woman gives birth to a freak cactus, a church grows hair, a bible comes alive and beats a pastor to death; these are just some of the psychotic images that Bentley Little conjurs up in, The Town. I think this could have just been a short story and still had the same effect, but it's worth the time reading it. Have fun dreams after you finish this one!
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This was my first Christy book and since then I've been pretty much addicted to them. Miss Marple is so ever charming and gossipy, solving her cases like it was a neighborhood affair she desperatly had to look into. The only thing I disliked was the ending. It was too abrupt. Overall, it is a strange, and intriguing, case of murder.