Two Miss Marple Short Stories by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie wrote a slew of short stories. Many featured her celebrated detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, and a few included her detective duo, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. And many were standalones, mysteries, thrillers, spy stories, and even a ghost story or two.  

The woman was a writing machine.

Two of her Jane Marple stories are “The Case of the Perfect Maid” and “The Herb of Death.” Both are vintage Marple. 

 

In “The Case of the Perfect Maid,” the village of St. Mary Mead is buzzing with the news – a maid has been fired by two elderly sisters living together, supposedly on the grounds of theft. Miss Marple’s own maid, a good friend of the fired woman, asks her to “put things right;” there was no way her friend would have stolen anything. And Miss Marple pays a visit, discovering what the rest of the village has learned – a replacement maid has been installed, ad she may be the best maid ever to grace the village. But something is off, and Miss Marple knows it.

 

Agatha Christie

In “The Herb of Death,” a group of weekend guests (including Miss Marple) are gathered together, telling stories. One woman tells the story of a great tragedy, in which a young woman died of poisoning after eating foxglove mistakenly mixed with sage. The odd thing is that no one else at that fatal dinner got sick. So, what happened? Miss Marple quietly beings to piece together what really happened.

 

In her lifetime, Christie became an international institution, writing scores of novels and stories and selling millions of books. One interesting fact: She wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles, her first novel, after a bet with her sister Madge. After rejections by six publishers, it was finally published four years later.

 

These short stories are what we call “cozy mysteries” today. Blood and gore is limited; gn graphic scenes of sex or violence. They are period pieces – and they’re great fun to read and solve along with Miss Marple.

 

Related:

 

“The Lamp” – A Ghost Story by Agatha Christie.

 

Two Short Stories by Agatha Christie.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Stack Underflow: Losing the Craft of Coding – Jarett Malouf at The New Atlantis.

 

The Passing of the American Century – Lee Congdon at Modern Age.

 

The 1776 New York Campaign: 250 Years Later – Daniel Welch at Emerging Revolutionary War Era. 

 

One of the Deadliest Persecutions Against Christians in History – Samuel Sey at Slow to Write.

 

Edith Cavell – Brussels, Dawn, October 12, 1915 – A London Inheritance.

Decision on the Stairs: New Short Story at Cultivating

The Summer 2026 edition of Cultivating Oaks Press is online today, and the theme is “renewing charity.” My new short story, “Decision on the Stairs,” is fiction, but it’s based on something that happened to my wife and I in London in 2012. We were getting ready for our day when fire alarms went off, and the hotel had to be evacuated. The elevators were not an option; we were on the 14^th floor, and the hotel was nearly full. There was no panic, but there was rising anxiety, and people were rushing to get out.  

What happened on the stairs became a short story 14 years later. You can read the story here. You can access the entire issue here.

Photograph by H&CO via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Christmas Solo – my new story at Cultivating Oaks Press

I have a new story at Cultivating Oaks Press. Entitled “The Christmas Solo,” it’s a tale of a man floundering after a marriage disaster who finds his way back with a Christmas song.  

It’s inspired by a song that has a short but strange history on YouTube, of all places. Early last October, a suggested video showed up on my YouTube page. Because it used a photo of the singer Josh Groban, I thought it was a new song by him. It was called “Light of Heaven,” and after listening to it a couple of times, I realized it sounded like Groban singing but wasn’t. Then I ask myself, what is this? Something done with an AI program? Identity theft? But if it was on YouTube, shouldn’t it have been vetted or approved with a new channel?

 

There were a number of similar videos, most using Groban’s picture and the voice sounding like Groban’s, but not quite his. A few other videos used other well-known singers like Rihanna. 

 

But I liked “Light of Heaven.” I’d listen to it while I did my periodic walks. Slowly, as I listened, a story began to shape itself in my mind. A song about the Nativity could become a way of redemption for a broken man. 

 

That’s the story I wrote for Cultivating Oaks Press. 

 

I had continued to listen to “Light of Heaven” on YouTube until this past weekend. It was still available on Saturday. On Sunday, clicking on the link brought this message: “Video unavailable. This video has been removed due to a contractual obligation with a music licensor.” Not only had the video vanished, but its channel, along with all the other songs, was gone as well.

 

It’s a story based on a song that became a ghost. All that’s really left of the song is this story. 

 

Photograph by Tom Allport via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Wisdom through the awful grace of God – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

The Adams Book Club: An Introduction – Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Archaeologists stunned to find Homer’s Iliad inside ancient Egyptian mummy – Vishwam Sankaran at The Independent. 

 

Vagabondia – Spitalfields Life.

Cultivating, Winter 2026: Renewing Gratitude

The winter issue of Cultivating Oaks Press is live, and the theme is renewing gratitude. This issue includes some wonderful essays, articles, and stories by Rob Jones, Annie Nardone, Sheila Underwood Vamplin, Adam Nettesheim, Christina Brown, Lara d'Entremont, Kelly Keller, Maribeth Barber, and many more. I have a short story, "Grateful for the War." 

Some Monday Readings

 

C.S. Lewis Returns to Earth – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Dispatch No. 4: Jayber Crow – Amelia Friedline at Dispatches to Jack.

 

Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

Some Tuesday Readings

The Seven Crossings – poem by Ulysses Arlen at The Society of Classical Poets. 

Dream – poem by David Whyte.

 

The Divine Beauty of Imperfection – Robert Sirico at The Free press on Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty.”

 

Night City – poem by W.S. Graham at Spitalfields Life (with photographs).

 

The End of the Age of Singing – poem by Niall Campbell at Literary Matters.

 

52 (a poem) and “The Christmas Nobody Wanted” (a short story) – by Glynn Young (that’s me) at Cultivating Oaks Press.

 

“The Christmas Night,” poem by Lucy Laud Montgomery – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Aspiration – poem by Emily Dickinson at Every Day Poems.

 

“Frost at Midnight,” poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Flaws – poem by Joshua Thomas at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Photograph by Osman Rana via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Christmas Nobody Wanted

The Christmas issue of Cultivating Oaks Press is now online, and I have a short story, “The Christmas Nobody Wanted.” It includes essays, reflections, and even a recipe by Andrew Roycroft, Amelia Friedline, Annie Nardone, Junius Johnson, Matthew Clark, Adam Nettesheim, Marbieth Barber, Hillevi Anne Peterson, and several others.  

The theme of the issue is “Making Room to Receive,” and you can access all the posts here. 

 

Photograph by Jessica Fadel via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Mud Queen

When I agreed to co-teach a Sunday School class of second graders, I had no idea of what I was going to experience. And it wasn’t the kids. 

It was my co-teacher, Carl.

 

He recruited me. We both had our youngest children – boys – in second grade. The Sunday School class needed a teacher. We’d met in an adult Sunday School class, but we weren’t particularly close friends. 

 

“Look,” Carl said, “they need a teacher for the second grade. I can entertain the kids, but you’re the teacher. We have to make this fun. We can show the kids that Sunday School is fun. And so is learning about God.”

 

To continue reading, please see my story at Cultivating Oaks Press. This is the summer edition, and the theme is merriment.

 

Photograph by Matt Seymour via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

"Abscond" by Abraham Verghese

After reading the short story “Abscond” by Abraham Verghese, I was convinced that it was at least partially based on his own life. When I read the biography on his web page, I knew I had guessed correctly. 

Ravi is a young teen who is turning out to be one of the best tennis players of his generation. An only child, he lives with his parents in suburban New Jersey. His father is a surgeon who commutes daily into New York City, maintaining a unvaried schedule of returning home at lunchtime to eat and take a short nap. Ravi’s mother runs the household. His parents maintain a network of friendships with other Indian-Americans.

 

The day starts like any other day. Ravi’s father goes to work and returns home for lunch and his nap. Except this day, he never wakes up. And Ravi’s life changes forever.

 

Abraham Verghese

“Abscond” is Ravi’s story, and it is a story of family life, family upheaval, grief, and a boy having to grow up faster than his years. It’s also a beautiful story of how friendship and maintaining tradition steers a family through crisis. It brings tears to the eyes more than once.

 

Verghese is a doctor and vice chair at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a writer of fiction and non-fiction. His works include My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss, and the novels Cutting for Stone and The Covenant of Water. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2016.

 

I haven’t read Verghese’s novels, but if “Abscond” is any indication, then I have a fine reading experience ahead.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Seventeen Theses on Writing and Place – Matt Miller at A Habitation.

 

The Quiet Divide – Ben Henson at Front Porch Republic.

 

A Kansan Winning Missouri in Arkansas – American Civil War & UK History.

 

How Jane Austen Pulled It Off: On Emma – Jennifer Egan at The Paris Review.

 

Minnesota is no longer the ‘state that works’ – Jenna Stocker at The Spectator.

The Stamp of Generosity

The spring issue of Cultivating Oaks Press is online, and I have a short story, entitled “The Stamp of Generosity,” included with all the other articles that explore the topic of generosity. My story is based on an event from my own experience, when I was about 12 or 13 years old. A stamp store really did exist in that location, but it was known under another name.  

You can read my story here.

 

You can access the entire issue here.

 

Photograph by Krista Bennett via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Eleven Numbers” by Lee Child

Dr. Nathan Tyler is a mathematics professor who’s planning to attend a mathematics conference in Moscow. The State Department is warning Americans against traveling to Russia, but Tyler is still planning to go. And then a few days before he is to leave, he’s contacted and told (strongly asked) to meet first with a group. He’s met, driven, flown, and driven to a meeting at Ft. Meade, and he’s asked to undertake an assignment for the White House. 

Tyler is to introduce himself to a Russian mathematician who’s one of the leading practitioners in the world. He’s shown what’s wanted – the key to a complex series of numbers that will allow the United States to disable the entire nuclear weapon capability of Russia.

 

He agrees to undertake the assignment and several days later he lands in Moscow. Driving his rental car to the hotel, almost out of nowhere comes a police car with sirens screaming, t-boning Tyler’s car, knocking over a lamppost, and inuring the policeman driving the car. Not to mention the damage to both automobiles. He’s charged, the U.S. Embassy legal attaché advises him to plead guilty, and even though sentenced to some unknown number of years, the U.S, government will trade him for a prisoner the Russians want. At least, that’s the hope.

 

Tyler will soon learn that nothing is what it seems, and he might be able to trust anyone, including his U.S. friends.

 

Lee Child

Eleven Numbers is a short story by bestselling thriller writer Lee Child, and it’s a tale with so many twists and turns that the reader eventually stops trying to guess the outcome and just goes along for the ride. And it’s a riveting ride.

 

Lee Child, the pen name for James Dover Grant CBE, is a British thriller writer best known for his Jack Reacher movies (made into movies with Tom Cruise and a television series with Alan Richardson). He attended law school, did art-time work in theater, and then joined Granada Television for 18 years. His company made such series as Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. Fired after a corporate restructuring in 1995, he bought $6 worth of paper and sat down to write, drafting Killing Floor, the first of the Jack Reacher novels. And the rest, as they say, is thriller history.

 

I’ve watched the Jack Reacher television series with Alan Richardson, and if you find violence, gratuitous and otherwise, enjoyable, it may be the series (two seasons) for you. The series is two engrossing stories, but I found myself flinching repeatedly during each episode.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Murders for February – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

Turner’s genius for technology – Andrew Wilton at Engelsberg Ideas.

 

Trump’s New Deal: 100 days to reverse the legacy of FDR – Niall Ferguson at The Times of London.

 

How MAGA Won the ‘Sensitive Young Man’ – Mana Afsari at The Free Press.

 

What We Know and What We Don’t Know about January 6 – John Daniel Davidson at Hillsdale College / Imprimis.

Kindness on the Mountaintop

The Winter 2025 edition of Cultivating Oaks Press is now online, and the theme of this issue is kindness. You can read a number of essays and articles on the subject, and the authors include Annie Nardone, Amelia Friedline, Tom Darin Liskey, Rob Jones, Amy Malskeit, Lara d’Entremont, Matthew Clark, Christina Brown, Junius Johnson, Kirk Manton, Sam Keyes, Sheila Vamplin, and several more. 

I have a short story on the theme, “Kindness on the Mountaintop,” and you can read it here.

 

Photograph by Jess Zoerb via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Things Worth Remembering: The Zionism of Martin Luther King, Jr. – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

Onward – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Winter’s Cold and Storms in Civil War Art – Brian Swartz at Emerging Civil War.

 

Diaspora 64 – poem by Oliver de la Paz at Literary Matters.

 

Trump is Uncool. And That’s a Good Thing – Peter Savodnik at The Free Press.

 

“I Sought the Wood in Winter,” poem by Willa Cather – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"Ushers" by Joe Hill

Martin Lorensen is a young man who’s been extremely lucky, or he’s extremely guilty. Twice he’s narrowly escaped death – a train wreck and a school shooting. Both times, his escape was a last-minute thing – a panic attack kept him from boarding the train and an upset stomach stopped him from entering school and returning home. In the train wreck case, he warned a mother and daughter not to board.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Mystic Chords of Memory: Reclaiming American History – Wilfred McClay at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

In William Blake’s Lambeth – Spitalfields Life.

 

“Tragedy,” poem by Jill Spargur – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Andrew Fuller on the Politicization of the totality of our lives – Michael A.G. Azad Haykin at Historia ecclesiastica.  

Shifting Landscape – poem by Kelle Belmonte at Kelly’ Scribbles.

A Language Lesson

I have a short story in the fall edition of Cultivating Oaks Press. The edition focuses on the theme of “fortitude,” and my story is entitled “A Language Lesson.” This is how it begins:

As the train arrived at Heidelberg Station, Sam McClure smiled to remember the first time he’d arrived here. In 1906, he’d just turned 16 and was preparing to spend his high school junior year with a family in Germany. He’d traveled by himself across the Atlantic on the H.M.S. Heimat for Hamburg, sent a telegram to Heidelberg to alert them of his arrival, and taken the train to his sponsoring family. His textbook-fluent German had been more than useful from the time he boarded the German liner in New York Harbor.

 

The Mittelstein family had been waiting: Dr. Aaron Mittelstein, chemistry professor at the university; his wife Ada; and their three children, Wolfgang, 18, Paul, 16, and Annaliese, 13. Wolfie was preparing to leave for university in Berlin. Paul, known as Mitti for being the middle child, was almost exactly Sam’s age and would share the same classes in Gymnasium, the German school he would attend. Annaliese would be attending Gymnasium with them.

 

Sam hadn’t known then what the Mittelsteins thought, but for him it had been love at first sight. That love, and what would become his deep friendship with Mitti, sustained him through a huge bout of homesickness and a steep cultural learning curve. He’d come to love this family so deeply that he returned four years later and stayed with them for a year abroad at the university.

 

To continue reading, please see my post at Cultivating Oaks Press. You can read all of the contributions here.

Photograph: Ransacking a Jewish home during Kristallnacht 1938.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The red star returns – Gary Saul Morson at The New Criterion on the specter of communism.

 

The death of conservatism? – Henry George at The Critic Magazine.

 

Slange Var! – Samuel Schaefer at Front Porch Republic on toasts.

 

Fine dining, POW Style: Johnson’s Island Rat Club – Kevin Donovan at Emerging Civil War.

"The Bookstore Wedding" by Alice Hoffman

When she’s old enough to leave, Isabel Gibson flees from her family on Brinkley Island. She was 10 when her mother died, and she was so overwhelmed by her father’s and sister’s grief, not to mention her own, she determined to leave and block herself from love. She eventually married, but it ended in divorce.

She not only left her family behind; she also left her best friend, Johnny Lenox, the boy she loved and who loved her since they were children. Her mother’s bookstore, which her father tried to operate but couldn’t get through his grief, has been run by Isabel’s sister Sophie. 

 

Alice Hoffman

Isabel and Johnny reconnect; they never really disconnected. And they decide to marry, but something always seems to be getting in the way.

 

The Bookstore Wedding by Alice Hoffman is a short story (related to the author’s Once Upon a Time Bookstore series) that isn’t as much about romance as it is about love – love for family, love for others, and love for community. It’s a simple story, told well, that ends in an unexpected but satisfying way. 

 

Hoffman is the bestselling author of more than 30 novels, three books of short stories, and eight books for children and young adults. Her work has received a number of significant recognitions, including movie versions, Oprah Book Club selections, and Publishers Weekly honors. Her novel about Anne Frank, When We Flew Away, will be published in September. A native of New York City, she lives in Boston.

 

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Water Comes Out – poem by John Foy at Literary Matters.

 

A Noiseless, Patient Spider – poem by Walt Whitman at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Poetry – poem by Joseph Legaspi at Every Day Poems.

 

A 2000-Year-Old Argument Over the Flute is the Most Important Thing in Our Culture Right Now – Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker.

 

“Adlestrop,” poem by Edward Thomas – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Conversation with Tania Runyan – Ben Palpant at Rabbit Room Poetry.

"Remembering the Journey," A Brookhaven Short Story

When he looked back on that time, he could see the first days were the easiest, if also the most frightening. And more dangerous days were to follow. 

Like hundreds and thousands of others, he walked home from the war, home from defeat and surrender. Glory was long gone, erased in places with names like The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Petersburg, and Appomattox.

 

The road he took began in Virginia. It ended more than 900 miles later in Mississippi, and home. The camaraderie he’d experienced with others walking home disappeared three days into the journey, when he discovered he’d been left behind. Alone, he walked the often-deserted roads, asking the occasional fellow traveler the direction and the next town.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Lukasz Szmigiel via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Shrouded Veterans: Father and Son United in Death – Frank Jastrzembski at Emerging Civil War.

 

Unyielding Faith: First Crusade’s Starving Army and the Jerusalem Miracle – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

Why French Jews Believed the Political Right Could Save Them – and France – Peter Savodnik at The Free Press. 

 

Accidentally Raising Readers – Melissa Woodruff at Story Warren.

The Unexpected Ballerina

The summer issue of Cultivating Oaks Press is live online, and the theme is courage. It includes a short story I wrote, "The Unexpected Ballerina." The issue is chock full of articles, poems, photography, and more by Annie Nardone, Junius Johnson, Maribeth Barber Albritton, Amelia Friedline, Kris Comely, Justin Lee Parker, Amy Wevodau Malskeit, Rob Jones, and more, under the general editorship of Lancia Smith. It's a wonderful issue.

"A Shining" by Jon Fosse: It Does Have Punctuation, Which Helps

In 2023, Norwegian author Jon Fosse received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He’s a novelist, playwright, essayist, and author of children’s books; in fact, he’s likely better known for his theater plays than his novels.  

When I read about the Nobel, I checked Amazon to see what of his works might be available in English. At the time, there wasn’t much; the situation now is considerably different. There was a short story available in translation, A Shining, translated by Damion Searls. 

 

A Shining is a short story, a longish is – coming in at 43 pages in the e-book version. It tells the story of man who drives form him home with no destination in mind. He simply keeps driving until his car gets stuck in a narrow forest road. After debating what to do, he decides to try to find help in the forest.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Maurice Sills, St. Paul’s Cathedral Treasure – Spitalfields Life.

 

The Art of Oral Storytelling – Zane Sherrer at Story Warren.

 

Gadfly Graffiti – Stephen Knepper at Front Porch Republic.

"Lovers at the Museum" by Isabel Allende

A night watchman at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, makes a startling discovery – a young man and woman are asleep in one of the galleries. They’re discovered in front of a metal sculpture entitled “Rising Sea” by the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. The young man is naked; the young woman is wearing an elaborate bridal gown.  

Inspector Larramendi of the Bilbao police is one the case, except he’s not sure exactly what the case is about. No one knows how the lovers got through the locked doors; the couple say the door was open. They claim they were in the museum throughout the night and never saw a guard. The would-be bride had fled her wedding ceremony, sobbing. She found a young stranger, and the got exceedingly drunk. They both independently claim the museum had suddenly appeared in front of them, like a magician’s trick. 

 

They suspect the museum might be enchanted. Inspector Larramedi, the “Hound of Bilbao,” is inclined to agree. 

 

Isabel Allende

Lovers at the Museum is a new short story by the acclaimed writer Isabel Allende, and the reader will be forgiven for thinking he or she has taken a step into magic realism. This might happen in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Macondo or the Lima of Mario Vargas Llosa (in fact, I was reminded of the telenovelas of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter). The Guggenheim in Bilbao is a real museum, whose architectural style might be called “anti-architecture” or “melted metal.” The sculpture cited in the story is a real metal sculpture, and the inspector can be forgiven for at first thinking it’s a large curtain. 

 

Allende has previously published The House of the Spirits and some 25 other books. Born in Peru, raised in Chile, and now living in California, she founded a charitable foundation after her daughter died in 1996. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014, and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2018. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

What’s American Fiction Without the Short Story? – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

The Farm Woman Speaks – Gracy Olmstead at Plough Quarterly on the novels of George Eliot.

 

Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? – Emma Green at The New Yorker.

 

The Prophets: D.A. Henderson – Joe Nocera at The Free Press on how not to fight pandemics.

 

Some Monday Readings

MLK’s Former Speechwriter: ‘We Are Trying to Save the Soul of America’ – Francesca Block at The Free Press.  

The real reason people are flocking to red states – Lewis Andrews at The Spectator.

 

It’s in the Blood – short story by Victoria Leigh Bennett at The Wombwell Rainbow.

 

Breathing – poem and artwork by Sonja Benskin Miller.

 

Nathanael’s Epiphany – poem by Malcom Guite.

 

Our Father’s House: Sr. Mariella Gable introduces a collection of Catholic fiction – The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Book Review: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta – Zak Schmoll.

 

Declaration on an Independent – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review on Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography.

Painting: Benjamin Franklin.

Christmas Oranges

I have a new short story, “Christmas Oranges,” published today at Cultivating Oaks. It’s based on a work-in-progress, tentatively entitled Brookhaven. You can read the story here; the entire Christmas issue can be accessed here.  

The story, like the work-in-progress, is historical fiction, set in 1863 to 1865 during the Civil War, the Reconstruction period, and 1915. It is loosely (very loosely) based upon events in my own family, although the characters are entirely fictitious.

 

Photograph by Leonardo de Assis via Unsplash. Used with permission.