First completed book of the year! This story collection was a lot of fun: modern mystery authors writing in the style of Christie (but also themselves) to give us new Marple. As with all short story collections, some were misses, but overall I had a really good time reading their takes on Marple stories. Some were super lighthearted and some were more dark. I found it to be a really fun mix. McManus had the only story I thought was really boring and obvious, which is pretty good out of 12. This collection felt like Encyclopedia Brown for grownups and honestly I want that. Also, I felt like the authors did a good job referencing Marple books without spoiling too much if you’re planning to go back and read more actual Christie.

SO entertaining! LOVED these variety of stories starring Jane Marple. Really appreciated all the different points of views, perceptions, time periods, and settings. Some stood out more than others, but all were highly enjoyable and was hard to put down when in the middle of a story. I definitely admire how one can fit so much detail, nuance, and layers to a murder mystery in such a short space/format! These authors did a great job.

I had high hopes for this book. It's filled with top notch mystery writers that are currently ruling the genre. Having said that, only three stories out of 12 felt solid to me.

I’m an avid Agatha Christie fan. I really enjoyed this ode to her and the Detective Marple character with 12 new short stories written by 12 other brilliant authors in the field. I always get a little concerned with spin-offs of original Christie works or when people compare other works/authors to her, but when I saw Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley were involved… I knew this was going to be great and I needed to read it. It didn’t disappoint and the great Agatha Christie and Marple legacy lives on!!! I was thrilled to receive not only an e-ARC but also a physical ARC of this title through Bibliolifestyle as part of a promotional book tour on instagram. Thank you so much to William Morrow, NetGalley, and all these fantastic authors for the opportunity to read and review early!

Loved this short story collection. They offered a fresh take on Miss Marple's character while still keeping the feel of the original series.

I love the original Miss Marple books and have read and re-read them many times. The authors of these short stories have written interesting mysteries for the most part but they overlooked her real character, the slightly dowdy spinster whose sharp eyes missed little but who never pushed herself forward. Too many of these stories could be about anyone , not the legendary Miss Marple.

Miss Marple like you have never read her before! These stories capture the essence of Miss Marple while modernizing her in a wonderful way.

Delightful collection of stories that tap into the spirit of Christie. I was impressed how each author truly embodied the essence of Miss Marple, yet also brought a modern spin. Only the last story in the collection made me feel like Marple acted out of character. But after thinking on it, it seems a fitting end. As a lifelong fan of this character, I enjoyed this immensely. A must for any fan of Agatha Christie or golden age detective fiction.

Current mystery and suspense writers take a turn writing new Agatha Christie mysteries and for the most part give the old girl a run for her money.

All of these stories was so fun and came together wonderfully. I loved that we got so many thriller authors together for the Christie read, and they captured Miss Marple perfectly.

Fans of Dame Agatha Christie's beloved elderly lady sleuth, Miss Jane Marple, will be enchanted with this anthology of new mysteries written by some of the most popular women mystery writers. Lucy Foley, Ruth Ware, Naomi Alderman, and others pay tribute to the queen of mystery writers by placing her heroine in new settings and slightly later periods. Miss Marple is as insightful as ever as she solves mysteries in her beloved St Mary Mead, New York City, and even on a cruise ship bound for Hong Kong. Each story captures what fans love most about Miss Marple who is forever being dismissed as a dotty old maid, but who always reveals herself to be as sharp as a diamond drill as she solves the mystery and reveals the culprit. The loveable characters that populate the village of St. Mary Mead are also brought to life with an accuracy that will make the reader smile. All in all, a wonderful tribute to a great writer and the unforgettable character she created. This was a great read!

Modern authors present their version of Jane Marple stories. Many of them are well known. Ruth Ware, Alyssa Cole, Val McDermid, etc.

I felt that the stories were reasonably well in character for Agatha Christie's version of Jane Marple. That being said, there were a few stories that I enjoyed particularly. The Alyssa Cole version story that discusses racism as part of it was one of them that I thought was well done. I plan to recommend it to my Mystery Lover's Book Group.

Quite frankly, this collection is brilliant. I loved the authors and even got to read some stories from "new-to-me" authors. Reading about Miss Marple through the completely different eyes was such a treat.

For fans of Agatha Christie, Marple: Twelve New Mysteries is a fun homage. None of the authors quite manage to capture her tone or style, which was a little disappointing. However, they all clearly did their homework with references to other characters, places, and plots from the twelve books Christie published about Miss Marple. I had high expectations from the stories by Elly Griffiths, Leigh Bardugo, and Ruth Ware but while the plots and characters were strong, their stories' conclusions seemed to lose their way and either drifted to far from the genre and spirit of Christie's writing, or became boringly predictable. Stand out stories were "Miss Marple Takes Manhattan" by Alyssa Cole and "The Jade Empress" by Jean Kwok, both authors bringing their own style and voice to Marple in a way that still evoked the original Marple. Dreda Say Mitchell's "A Deadly Wedding Day" came closest to capturing Agatha Christie's voice and ethos and was by far my favorite in the whole collection. I would love to see more from her in the period cozy mystery genre. Overall, a collection that is a nice nod to the Queen of Mystery but one that still fell short.

Marple: Twelve New Mysteries is an homage anthology collection featuring 12 new stories by top-shelf authors channeling their best Christie vibes and featuring the world's most beloved octogenarian sleuth. Released 13th Sept 2022 by Harper Collins on the William Morrow imprint, it's 384 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats.

I'm of two minds about modern homage fiction. It seems to be either very very good or spectacularly awful. This anthology, happily, is really quite good. It's not surprising, since the 12 (all female) authors selected for inclusion represent some of the biggest crime and romance writers in the trade. As always with anthologies, some of them resonated better for me personally, but all of them were of a very high quality.

They were mostly in the 4 star range(ish) with a smattering of really standout stories. One reason I prefer collections and anthologies is that short fiction is really challenging. It's spare and the author doesn't have a wealth of wordage to develop characters or the plotting. Well written short fiction is a delight. I also love collections because if one story doesn't really grab me, there's another story just a few pages away. I can only recall a few times where I've read a collection (or anthology) straight through from cover to cover as I did this one. I also feel that the canonical Miss Marple really shone in short fiction format as opposed to full length novel.

Four stars on average. It's a diverting read.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

As a collection of stories, this was wonderful. I think everyone has different tastes when it comes to authors and each author had a clear and unique voice. That being said I am a huge Lucy Foley fan and her writing style resonates with me. Her story, “Evil in Small Places”, was superb and a great way to start off the collection. It had the depth and atmospheric feel that I have come to expect from Lucy Foley while also introducing the character of Marple to me. What I think is so perfect about a collection of stories like this is that there is a story in there for everyone, and you can take it one story at a time and come back to it. This is a perfect book to go into the fall and winter with.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for this digital ARC.

What a powerhouse of writers! They bring light to Agatha Christie with twelve new Miss Marple mysteries. An interesting premise that allowed you to feel each writer's distinct style blended with classic Christie. A treat to read!

What a fantastic collection of short stories from an amazing group of writers. This book deserves all the hype and I was definitely captivated from beginning to end.

From the moment I saw the cover of Marple: Twelve New Mysteries, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. These are the first Miss Marple stories authorized by Agatha Christie’s estate since 1976 when Sleeping Murder was published posthumously - the year Dame Agatha died.

Readers first met Jane Marple in the 1927 short story The Tuesday Night Club followed by the novel Murder at the Vicarage in 1930. The authors of the new short stories magnificently captured the voice and the knowing glint in the eye of the beloved spinster crime-solver bringing us back to familiar characters and settings.

In the first story, Evil in Small Places, author Lucy Foley nails it, placing St. Mary Meade’s own Miss Marple at the home of a school friend in another village, sitting by the fire knitting a jumper (sweater) for her nephew Raymond, before murder most foul occurs.

It wasn’t until the second story, Val McDermid’s The Second Murder at the Vicarage that I realized Miss Marple’s voice in my head was actually that of Geraldine McEwen, the late actor who played her in a dozen films I’ve watched countless times on PBS, Acorn and BritBox.

In The Murdering Sort by Karen M. McManus, I enjoyed meeting Jane Marple’s great-great niece Nicola and wonder if enough detecting genes run in the family for more mysteries to solve.

I’m not sure if I have a favorite of the collection but Elly Griffiths’ Murder at Villa Rosa would be in the running. It was interesting to see Jane Marple have an impact on the story set on the Amalfi Coast without her being the protagonist.

These tales also find her in the English countryside, London, New York, Cape Cod, on a cruise ship to Hong Kong, all courtesy of her novelist nephew Raymond West. She always did get around.

While new books by my favorite authors are usually devoured, this Marple edition was savored. I highly recommend Marple: Twelve New Mysteries. In fact, it would be a perfect holiday gift for any Christie fan on your list - one story for each of the 12 days of Christmas.

I received a free egalley courtesy of William Morrow, a division of Harper Collins, through NetGalley. This review is fair and impartial.

Tampering with any icon is risky business, but fortunately in Marple, the anthology of new short stories featuring Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, the invited authors respect the reverence readers feel for this character while also managing to infuse their own styles into the included tributes. Each of the twelve stories in the collection is a worthy addition to the legacy of this beloved character.

As with any anthology work, different readers will have different favorites based on a host of varying criteria. In this case, some will be drawn to the stories that adhere most faithfully to Miss Marple as we already know her, some will find their interest piqued as favorite authors try penning their “version” of Marple, and still others will be interested to see what those writers not typically associated with crime fiction will do when playing in that sandbox.

Rather than analyze every story in this collection, it seems prudent to provide examples of all these approaches so that hesitant readers can feel safe opening the covers of Marple, knowing that nothing will tarnish the heirloom quality of Christie’s Miss Marple.

Taking probably the riskiest of approaches, Val McDermid’s “The Second Murder at the Vicarage” elects to pay homage to the first of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple novels by having a second murder occur at the St Mary Mead vicarage. Fortunately, McDermid is a huge fan and Christie purest, so she pulls off what some might consider an audacious feat with aplomb, providing a story that feels as though it flowed directly from the pen of the Dame herself. The Vicar is once again the narrator for this tale and the crime before Miss Marple is as realistic as her method of detection towards solving the murder.

A rising star in the crime fiction genre, Alyssa Cole takes Miss Marple to New York City in her story “Miss Marple Takes Manhattan.” While on her foray to the Big Apple, Miss Marple discovers American department stores as well as the allure of off-off Broadway. The contemporary-feeling narrative allows Cole to address ageism, sexism, and racism effectively within the context of a fascinating crime story. Micro-aggressions abound and stereotypes of all kinds are on display in service to the authentic story that readers will have a hard time forgetting.

“A Deadly Wedding Day” by the stalwart British crime fiction author Dreda Say Mitchell is set in the 1960s. This story finds Miss Marple attending the mixed-race wedding of a woman from St Honoré to an aristocratic UK gentleman. The native homeland of the bride is no doubt an intended homage to Agatha Christie’s A Caribbean Mystery which turns out to be a wise and inspired choice. A death at the wedding finds Marple and a strikingly similar woman from the Caribbean nation working together to solve a murder. Spiced up with a smattering of native maxims, details about the island’s landscape, and populated by a diverse cast, this story feels both progressive and traditional simultaneously. Miss Bella – Marple’s Island cohort – could easily carry a series of novels starring herself as the tropical Miss Marple.

Not all the stories are quite so traditional. For example, Elly Griffiths takes a delightfully different approach in her story “Murder at the Villa Rosa” and it pays off in dividends. While Miss Marple obviously features in this story and it contains several allusions to other classic works in Agatha Christie’s oeuvre, “Murder at the Villa Rosa” is really about the act of writing, the role of creation, and an author’s ability to find inspiration in both the stories of others and in the more mundane moments of life. It’s hard to imagine Agatha Christie herself feeling anything other than awe at this cleverly constructed examination of writing, celebrity, and the perils of both.

Karen M. McManus, one of the authors of young adult authors in the anthology, finds another unique way into her story, “The Murdering Sort.” In this story, Miss Marple plays second fiddle to her niece, Nicola West, who follows the family tradition to become an amateur sleuth herself. A complex situation in one of her school friend’s family sends Nicola down a twisting path of investigation. Nicola’s method of detection is right in line with Miss Marple’s, introducing a new generation of readers to the power of observation and intellect. This is another story that could easily spin off into a series of its own.

Leigh Bardugo – another writer of young adult works – is most well known for her exploration of the fantasy realm known as the Grishaverse, so seeing how she tackled the legacy of Miss Marple was one of the biggest unknowns in the new anthology. One need not have worried, as Bardugo is both an excellent writer and clearly a fan of Agatha Christie. In the story Miss Marple is called away from a holiday trip visiting her nephew by her friend Dolly Bantry. Dolly will be familiar to many Marple fans due to her appearance in several of Christie’s novels. Once again, mysterious goings-on at Gossington Hall will require some snooping and analysis by the great Miss Marple. Surprisingly, this ends of being the story that most directly ties to the Miss Marple legacy and will be remembered for a very long time by both fans of the elderly sleuth and those new to her charms.

That is a look at half of the stories in the Marple anthology, but rest assured that each of them is wonderful in their own ways. The other represented authors – some familiar, some less so – are: Naomi Alderman, Lucy Foley, Natalie Haynes, Jean Kwok, Kate Mosse, and Ruth Ware. You can see the publishers of this collection had no trouble getting by-in from many of the authors whose own works have been so clearly inspired by the legendary Dame Agatha Christie herself.

The stories in Marple as a welcome addition to the legacy of Agatha Christie and one of her most beloved creation, Miss Jane Marple. Many of these stories are sure to be appearing on award short-lists in the very near future.