I am beginning to believe that each prolific author has a whole treasure trove of lost manuscripts just languishing in a chest somewhere.Now new work by Agatha Christie has been discovered. According to The Bookseller.com, two never-before-seen Hercule Poirot short stories by Agatha Christie will be revealed in a new book to be published by HarperCollins this fall.

The stories, which will be published in Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, were found inside 73 notebooks discovered at Greenway, Christie’s family home in Devon, when the archive at the National Trust property was being established.

Secret Notebooks will include short story The Mystery of the Dog’s Ball, which was eventually reworked into the novel Dumb Witness, but unlike other Christie short stories-turned-­novels it remained unpublished, states The Bookseller.com. The other story, The Capture of Cerberus, was written to complete The Labours of Hercules, a collection which followed the 12 cases Poirot chose to end his career, adds The Bookseller.com. Christie eventually scrapped the story and wrote a different version, with the same title, again according to The Bookseller.com, which has more of the story.

The news of the lost Christie work couldn’t be more timely.Through July 26, PBS is airing Six by Agatha, a half-dozen whodunits by the famed British author. (Check your local TV listings for the times and date) Starting the week of July 5, Mystery Scene Editor in Chief and co-publisher Kate Stine will be answering questions at the Barnes and Noble Agatha Christie TV discussion. Kate’s knowledge of Agatha Christie reaches beyond her role at Mystery Scene. For about five years she was the director of the Agatha Christie Society. Kate will be answering questions during the week of July 5 as part of the teaming up of PBS Masterpiece MYSTERY! And BN.com to give the viewers and readers access to experts connected to each of their programs.If you sign up for the Masterpiece e-newsletter for program alerts, you can be entered to win a set of “Six by Agatha” books.Christie fans — and that includes a lot of us — should enjoy Kate’s session.

PHOTO: Miss Marple ‘They Do It With Mirrors’ with Julia McKenzie (left) as Miss Marple and Joan Collins (right) as Ruth van Rydock. Photo courtesy PBS

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 8:36 am and is filed under Agatha Christie, Miss Marple, TV Mysteries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.