One Book, One College is Illinois Central College's common read program. Each year, the committee invites students, faculty, staff, and the community to participate in a shared reading experience to promote literacy and a lifelong love of learning. The 2025-2026 school year will feature Agatha Christie's classic mystery, Murder on the Orient Express. In the spirit of providing a diverse group of reading experiences, the book is available from the library in numerous formats, including the original text, the 2024 graphic novel by Bob Al-Greene, multiple audiobooks with various narrators, the radio production, and the English Language Learners audiobook.
"Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year, but by the morning it is one passenger fewer. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Isolated and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must identify the murderer – in case he or she decides to strike again." - agathachristie.com
Experience Agatha Christie's masterpiece as you've never seen it before with this new graphic novel adaptation by Bob Al-Greene. Use your ICC log-in to read for free on Libby.
This carefully abridged audiobook is shorter with language targeted for English learners. English level B1. Listen to the audiobook on Libby with your ICC log-in!
Borrow the e-book on Libby for free using your ICC log-in!
Listen to the Murder on the Orient Express audiobook narrated by Sir David Suchet. David Suchet played Hercule Poirot in all 70 episodes of the BBC TV show Agatha Christie's Poirot over a period of 25 years. Use your ICC log-in to listen on Libby for free!
Hercule Poirot, Belgian Police officer turned world renowned private detective.
Click the arrows to view the suspects
Monsieur Bouc, Poirot's friend and the director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, the company that operates the Orient Express.
Samuel Ratchett is the murder victim; he asks for Poirot's investigative skill to uncover who has been sending him threatening letters. When Poirot declines to take Ratchett as a client, Ratchett is soon found dead in his room on the train.
Cyrus Hardman, a New York based Pinkerton posing as a car salesman.
Colonel John Arbuthnot, a tall British army officer returning from India.
Count Rudolph Andrenyi, a tall, Hungarian diplomat with English manner and clothing, traveling to France with his new wife.
Countess Helena Andrenyi, the Count's beautiful young wife.
Antonio Foscarelli, an exuberant Italian-American businessman from Chicago.
Princess Natalia Dragomiroff, an imperious, elderly Russian noblewoman and grande dame.
Mrs Caroline Martha Hubbard, a stout, elderly, very excitable American returning from a visit to her daughter who works in Turkey.
Hector Willard MacQueen, a tall, handsome, young American, the victim's secretary and translator.
Fraulein Hildegarde Schmidt, a middle-aged German woman, Princess Dragomiroff's maid.
Pierre-Paul Michel, the French conductor of the Calais coach.
Edward Henry Masterman, the victim's British valet (similar to what we may call a personal assistant today).
Greta Ohlsson, a middle-aged blonde Swedish missionary returning home for a vacation who cannot speak much English.
Mary Hermione Debenham, a tall, dark, young British woman, working as a governess (similar to a nanny or au pair) in Baghdad.
Dr. Constantine is a Greek physician who helps Poirot by examining Ratchett's dead body and accumulating all the scientific facts. He is not a suspect as he is in a different locked portion of the train at the time of the murder.
|
|
Born in 1890 in Devon, England, Dame Agatha Christie is often called the queen of mysteries. She wrote 66 full length novels as well as numerous plays, short stories, and novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Her books have sold over 100 million copies and have been translated into over 100 different languages. Only the Bible and William Shakespeare have sold more copies than Christie. She had long dreamed of traveling on the Orient Express, a real train service that ran from Paris, France, to Istanbul, Turkey through the mountains of Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. When the opportunity to accompany her archaeologist husband on an expedition to Syria presented itself, she was struck by inspiration for her 13th Poirot detective novel, Murder on the Orient Express. Christie's stories have created many of the common mystery tropes we see today, as well as inspiring some of our favorite modern films/filmmakers, including films like Scream, Knives Out, Glass Onion, Murder Mystery, and filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan, Quentin Tarantino, and Kenneth Branagh. Her characters like Hercule Poirot, Captain Hastings, Tommy and Tuppence, Miss Marple, and Ariadne Oliver continue to show up in film, TV, videogames, podcasts, books, comics, plays, and more as a new generation of Christie fans comes of age. |
