Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library
(Mrs. Christie Series)
by Amanda Chapman
About Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library
Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Greenwich Village in New York City (primarily near Washington Square)
Publisher : Berkley
Publication date : August 26, 2025
Print length : 368 pages
ISBN-10 : 0593818814
ISBN-13 : 978-0593818817
Digital ISBN-13 : 978-0593818831
ASIN : B0DP3R1Q9G
Audiobook ASIN B0DPJK5BPS
Book conservator Tory Van Dyne and a woman claiming to be Agatha Christie on holiday from the Great Beyond join forces to catch a killer in this spirited mystery from Amanda Chapman.
Tory Van Dyne is the most down-to-earth member of a decidedly eccentric old-money New York family. For one thing, as book conservator at Manhattan’s Mystery Guild Library, she actually has a job. Plus, she’s left up-town society behind for a quiet life downtown. So she’s not thrilled when she discovers a woman in the library’s Christie Room who calmly introduces herself as Agatha Christie, politely requests a cocktail, and announces she’s there to help solve a murder— that has not yet happened.
But as soon as Tory determines that this is just a fairly nutty Christie fangirl, her socialite/actress cousin Nicola gets caught up in the suspicious death of her less-than-lovable talent agent. Nic, as always, looks to Tory for help. Tory, in turn, looks to Mrs. Christie. The woman, whoever or whatever she is, clearly knows her stuff when it comes to crime.
Aided by an unlikely band of fellow sleuths —including a snarky librarian, an eleven-year-old computer whiz, and an NYPD detective with terrible taste in suits—Tory and the woman claiming to be her very much deceased literary idol begin to unravel the twists and turns of a murderer’s devious mind. Because, in the immortal words of Miss Jane Marple, “murder is never simple.”
AUTHOR GUEST POST
What Exactly Is the Mystery Guild Library? by Amanda Chapman
I love writing mysteries. I really do. But until I started writing them, my goal was to spend every day reading them. Which I pretty much did (and still do). But sometimes I can’t get my hands on that out-of-print classic that I’ve heard about. This (as we all know) is very frustrating and explains how I came to imagine The World’s Best Library – a library where you could find not only that particular out-of-print mystery classic, but others that you’d never even heard of. A veritable Aladdin’s cave of mystery novels.
Which is why, in MRS. CHRISTIE AT THE MYSTERY GUILD LIBRARY, I allowed my fevered imagination full reign. The library would be, as you might suspect (pun fully intended), dedicated to crime fiction: from traditional Golden Age mysteries (think Dorothy L. Sayers or John Dickson Carr); to American private eye whodunnits (think Raymond Chandler or Ross McDonald); to police procedurals (think Ed McBain to Tana French); to contemporary Scandinavian noir (think Steig Larson or Maj Sowall); to everything in between (add your favorites here). It would feature sleuths of all colors, all creeds, all genders, all ages, all levels of expertise (from police veterans to new-minted amateurs) – and all asking (and eventually answering) the same critical question: “Who dunnit?”
The Mystery Guild Library, I decided, would occupy the first two floors of one of the dozen or so remaining Greek Revival townhouses in Greenwich Village known as “The Row,” a series of elegant red brick, marble-trimmed mansions overlooking Washington Square Park. And it would have specific rooms devoted to a few of the greats – prime among them, of course, the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie herself. And best of all, I would live there.
Oops. I mean, my protagonist, the Mystery Guild Library’s fairly reclusive book conservator, Tory Van Dyne, would live there. She would live there because her grandmother had willed the house to her with the proviso that the Mystery Guild Library—a wonderful resource for mystery and crime fiction fans and scholars that had until then been jammed into four cramped rooms on the Upper West Side—would be given a twenty-year lease on the first two floors of the house.This is no problem for Tory, who loves the house, loves the idea of hundreds of mysteries at her fingertips and most of all loves the Christie Room.
Here’s how Tory describes it:
“The library’s Agatha Christie Room is a very close replica of British mystery novelist Agatha Christie’s personal library in Greenway House, her holiday home in Devon, England. It had been a labor of love masterminded by my grandmother, Margaret Jane Van Dyne, in what was at the time her home on Washington Square North and which now houses the Mystery Guild Library on the first two floors and Yours Truly on the two floors above.
“There she lived quite happily with her extensive collection of Agatha Christie first editions, spending the last twenty years of her life absorbed in re‑creating as closely as possible Mrs. Christie’s library at Greenway House.
“And when I say as closely as possible, I am not kidding.
“The Christie Room had been carved out of Grandmother’s second-floor drawing room overlooking the park. It was not only an architectural replica of the Greenway library — including faithful reproductions of its wonderfully eclectic furnishings—it also housed copies—hunted down over years by my grandmother of many of the more than four thousand volumes on the Greenway library shelves. These, of course, included Dame Agatha’s own sixty-six mystery novels (every one of which I had read, and in many cases reread, much to Grandmother’s delight), nineteen plays and two memoirs.
“The room itself was a comfortable space, large but quietly informal, with cream walls and white bookshelves and a down-filled, blue damask couch facing the fireplace. That couch fairly begged you to pick up one of Mrs. Christie’s mysteries (maybe The Body in the Library) and curl up for a good read. Or you could browse the offerings in its cozy alcove, where a collection of bargeware teapots shared space with a well-stocked bar cart, an armchair upholstered in dull gold velvet with an intricate design recalling Egyptian hieroglyphics, and a navy velvet settee edged with gold-embroidered trim.”
So, yes, it all sounds pretty idyllic, right? Until that fateful night when a woman claiming to be Agatha Christie on holiday from the Great Beyond shows up in the Christie Room, politely asks for a cocktail and announces that she is there to help Tory solve a murder – that has not yet happened.
Order Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library here! https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/763557/mrs-christie-at-the-mystery-guild-library-by-amanda-chapman/
About me: I am a lifelong mystery lover and wordsmith. As a book editor, fashion reporter and, eventually, the head of employee communications at a global bank, I’ve always made a living with my pen. But when the book-writing bug hit, I cheerfully waved goodbye to all that to write mysteries full time. Under the name Amy Pershing, I first wrote the Cape Cod Foodie Mysteries. MRS. CHRISTIE AT THE MYSTERY GUILD LIBRARY is the first book in my new Agatha Inc. mystery series. You can learn more about me (and sign up for my newsletter!) on my website as well as follow me on Facebook and Instagram.
About Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library:
Book conservator Tory Van Dyne and a woman claiming to be Agatha Christie on holiday from the Great Beyond join forces to catch a killer in this spirited mystery from Amanda Chapman.
Tory Van Dyne is the most down-to-earth member of a decidedly eccentric old-money New York family. For one thing, as book conservator at Manhattan’s Mystery Guild Library, she actually has a job. Plus, she’s left up-town society behind for a quiet life downtown. So she’s not thrilled when she discovers a woman in the library’s Christie Room who calmly introduces herself as Agatha Christie, politely requests a cocktail, and announces she’s there to help solve a murder—that has not yet happened.
But as soon as Tory determines that this is just a fairly nutty Christie fangirl, her socialite/actress cousin Nicola gets caught up in the suspicious death of her less-than-lovable talent agent. Nic, as always, looks to Tory for help. Tory, in turn, looks to Mrs. Christie. The woman, whoever or whatever she is, clearly knows her stuff when it comes to crime.
Aided by an unlikely band of fellow sleuths—including a snarky librarian, an eleven-year-old computer whiz, and an NYPD detective with terrible taste in suits—Tory and the woman claiming to be her very much deceased literary idol begin to unravel the twists and turns of a murderer’s devious mind. Because, in the immortal words of Miss Jane Marple, “murder is never simple.”
About Amanda Chapman
Amanda Chapman (aka Amy Pershing) is a lifelong mystery lover and wordsmith. Under the name Amy Pershing, she is also the author of the Cape Cod Foodie mysteries. An enthusiastic fan of traditional mysteries and of New York City, she found herself wondering, “What if someone recreated Agatha Christie’s personal library -– even to the furnishings and architecture — in New York City? What would happen in that space?” And thus MRS. CHRISTIE AT THE MYSTERY GUILD LIBRARY — the first in a new series — was born.
Author Links
https://www.facebook.com/amandachapmanauthor/
https://www.instagram.com/amandachapman_author/?hl=en
Website www.amandachapmanauthor.com
Follow Amanda Chapman on Goodreads
Purchase Links
PenguinRandomHouse – Amazon – B&N – Bookshop.org – Kobo
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