Agatha Christie (1890-1976). The queen of crime was born in Torquay, Devon, England, with the name Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller. Her father, Frederick Alvah Miller, was a successful American stockbroker and her mother, Clarissa Margaret Boehmer, was the daughter of a British army officer. In 1914, she married Colonel Archibald Christie of the British Royal Air Force, with whom she had a daughter, but their marriage was not happy and they eventually divorced in 1928. 

Agatha went through a serious depression when she found out that her husband was cheating on her, as well as the publication of her first novel, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," in 1920. "One of the most pleasant things that can happen to you is to have happy and joyful childhood years," she says, beginning the memoirs she started writing in 1950 and completed fifteen years later. She wrote numerous detective novels and short stories that have been translated into almost all the languages of the world and are estimated to have sold more than two billion copies. After the end of World War I, she created Hercule Poirot, the small, brilliant detective. Poirot, Miss Marple, and her other characters have appeared in films, radio shows, TV movies, and plays based on her books. Agatha Christie also participated in many archaeological expeditions organized by her second husband, the distinguished archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, who was fourteen years her junior, in the Middle East. In 1971, she was honored with the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE).