Agatha Christie was forty-eight years old in 1938, gaining fame and fortune from her prolific output of short stories and novels, one series starring the detective Hercule Poirot, another centered on the underestimated spinster Jane Marple. Christie’s life had settled into a comfortable routine: Part of the year was spent at her house near Oxford and part on excavations in the deserts of Iraq and Syria with her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan.

But Christie – one of the bestselling authors of all time - longed for a vacation refuge. That summer, she purchased a handsome Georgian manor house, not far from her birthplace. This Snap from award-winning journalist Joshua Hammer tells the story of Greenway, the home – now a museum - where Christie spent nearly every summer from 1938 until her death in 1976.