Arguably the greatest crime writer in the world, Agatha Christie's books still sell over four million copies each year. But who was the woman behind these eternally pleasing puzzlers? Beginning with the Edwardian world in which Christie grew up, Laura Thompson explores her relationships and investigates the many mysteries still surrounding Christie's life, most notably, her 11-day disappearance in 1926. Drawing from Christie's letters, papers, and notebooks as well as family interviews, Thompson's "sympathetic and insightful" biography (Publishers Weekly) sheds new light on the woman and her fiction.