Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie) was born in Torquay in 1890 and became, quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in over 100 foreign languages. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, and six novels under the name of Mary Westmacott.

Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the ‘Queen of Crime’. It was her sharp observations of the ambitions that drive people, their relationships and the conflicts that erupt between them, that added life and sparkle to her ingenious detective novels. When she turned this understanding of human nature away from the crime genre, writing anonymously as Mary Westmacott to prove that her writing could sell on its merit rather than her fame alone, she created bittersweet novels, love stories with a jagged edge, as compelling and memorable as the best of her wor.