The story of the house

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.Agatha Christie’s first ever short story, originally titled ‘House of Beauty’, explores insanity, death and immortality in a brief tale about the effects of a macabre recurring dream on a man’s life…

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.Years ago, a murder was committed on the night of a costume party thrown by Sir Richard Haydon, a man who was a rival of his cousin Eliot for the affections of the lovely Diana Ashley.

Sir Richard’s estate contained the grove of Astarte, which held a mysterious stone summer house. The summer house was rumoured to have been the site of numerous sacred rites in years long past, and in a surprise act, Diana enacted the role of Astarte, startling Sir Richard who stumbled and fell.

When the others reached him body, he was found dead of a knife wound to the heart. After all these years, can the Club still solve the case?.

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.Throwing on an almost convincing French accent, Tommy is determined to be the great Hanaud to his and Tuppence’s latest, rather lovely client. Miss Hargreaves has recently received a box of chocolates from nobody knows who, and due to her dislike of the treat was the only one to not fall foul of the arsenic spiked treats. But, Miss Hargreaves is not the first recipient of such a gift; three other large country houses have received arsenic laced chocolates. But Miss Hargreaves is holding something back, and it will take Tommy and Tuppence to take up residence at the old house to discover the true culprit, but will they find out the truth in time?

Please note that some images were unavailable for the electronic edition.The highly praised biography of an archetypal great house and the family who lived there for over 250 years.

‘The Big House’ is the biography of a great country house and the lives of the Sykes family who lived there, with varying fates, for the next two hundred and fifty years. It is a fascinating social history set against the backdrop of a changing England, with a highly individual, pugnacious and self-determining cast, including: ‘Old Tat’ Sykes, said to be one of the great sights of Yorkshire (the author’s great-great-great-grandfather), who wore 18th-century dress to the day of his death at ninety-one in 1861.

His son was similarly eccentric, wearing eight coats that he discarded gradually throughout the day in order to keep his body temperature at a constant. He was forced to marry, aged forty-eight, eighteen-year-old Jessica Cavendish-Bentick – a lively and highly intelligent woman who relieved the boredom of her marriage by acquiring a string of lovers, writing novels and throwing extravagant parties (her nickname became ‘Lady Satin Tights’), all the while accumulating debts that ended in a scandalous court case.

Their son, Mark, died suddenly whilst brokering the peace settlement at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I; Sledmere was destroyed by fire shortly afterwards.But the rebuilt Sledmere rose from the flames to resound again with colourful, brilliant characters in the 1920s and 1930s including the author’s grandmother, Lily, who had been a celebrated bohemian in Paris.

‘The Big House’ is vividly written and meticulously researched using the Sykes’ own family’s papers and photographs. In this splendid biography of place and time, Christopher Simon Sykes has resuscitated the lives of his ancestors and their glorious home from the 18th- through to the 20th-century.