Daily Archives for: April 2nd, 2020

Celebrating the Centenary of The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie 

By | On April 2, 2020 | Updated March 14, 2023 | Comments (0)

2020 marked one hundred years since Christie’s debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was first published.

As the inaugural Hercule Poirot mystery, the story was serialized in The Times (London) weekly edition from February to June 1920 and later published as a complete novel in the U.S. in October, 1920.

The book was written as the result of a challenge between Agatha and her older sister, who bet that Agatha couldn’t write a detective novel. While she was working in a dispensary during World War I, Agatha came up with the idea for the story using her knowledge of poisons. Read More→

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Passing by Nella Larsen (1929), a Novella of Identity and Alienation

By | On April 2, 2020 | Updated February 26, 2026 | Comments (0)

Passing by Nella Larsen (1891 – 1964), published in 1929, is one of the most iconic novels of the Harlem Renaissance era, the movement that celebrated the ascendence of Black writers, artists, and performers in the 1920s.

As the daughter of a white Danish immigrant mother and a mixed-race father from the Danish West Indies, the theme of Nella Larsen’s life, and in effect, her work, was that of a sense of non-belonging — not to any community, nor even to her immediate family. 

Larsen was the first woman of color to graduate from library school and to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing. Read More→

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