1. Agatha Christie is known affectionately as the Queen of Crime. Irrefutably one of the world's top-selling authors, more than one billion copies of her novels have been sold.

2. Agatha's childhood was unconventional for many reasons.

3. One of the reasons was her Mother's persistence that she not learn to read until the age of eight.

4. Fortunately, the bright young Agatha was able to teach herself and soon fell in love with English poetry. Agatha published her detective fiction, plays and memoirs under her own name. However, she also authored six romantic novels under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott.

5. This was much to the chagrin of her publishers who felt she should stick to crime. For almost twenty years, the public had no clue that Christie and Westmacott were one and the same.