The Cruel Sister

Agatha is 11 years old, lives in a grand but slightly crumbling English country house, and is certain of two things: she will be an explorer one day… and there is something very wrong with the new maid. It’s the early 1900s, and Agatha’s days are filled with books about Egypt, ancient tombs and strange diseases. Her father is always experimenting, her mother plays the piano (badly), and her brother Monty is more interested in fencing than feeling. But when Lucy, the new housemaid, arrives with a cloud of silence around her and a suitcase she never lets go of, Agatha’s curiosity is piqued. Soon, strange things begin to happen. A precious bracelet disappears. A strange smell fills the upstairs corridor. And a ghostly whisper seems to follow Agatha in the middle of the night. She’s read enough detective novels to know that something is wrong. With Monty as her reluctant Watson and her faithful dog George Washington at her side, Agatha begins her first real investigation. But the closer she gets to the truth, the more complex the mystery becomes. Who is Lucy? Why does she cry when no one is looking? And what does she mean when she says Agatha reminds her of someone she lost long ago? 

Told in Agatha’s sharp, witty voice, The Cruel Sister offers a rich, emotionally layered mystery that reflects the real-life wit and insight of the woman Agatha Christie would one day become.

In the Footsteps of the Great Classics is a fresh, clever and inventive middle-grade series, edited by Guido Sgardoli, that aims to introduce young readers to different narrative genres through the lens of classic authors’ childhoods. Not the original classics, but new stories by contemporary writers, inspired by real or imagined events in the early lives of classic authors like Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and Agatha Christie. Each volume mixes biography, fiction, and genre exploration — adventure, horror, sci-fi, and mystery — with a final section of writing games and activities.