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In addition to her novels, Christie published 150 short stories in her career. Almost all of these were written for publication in fiction magazines with over half of them first appearing in the 1920s. They were then published in book form in various collections, some of which were identical in the UK and US (e.g. The Labours of Hercules) and others where publication took place in one market but not the other.
Twelve of the stories which were published in The Sketch magazine in 1924 under the sub-heading of The Man who was No. 4 were joined in one continuous narrative in the novel The Big Four in 1927. Four other stories, "The Submarine Plans" (1923), "Christmas Adventure" (1923), "The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest" (1932) and "The Second Gong" (1932), were expanded into longer narratives by Christie (respectively The Incredible Theft, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, The Mystery of the Spanish Chest and Dead Man's Mirror, although the shorter versions of all four have also been published in the UK).
Only one short story remains unpublished in the UK in book form: "Three Blind Mice" (1948), on which Christie placed a moratorium whilst the stage play based on the story, The Mousetrap, was still running in the West End. Prior to this the story was published in four installments in the weekly magazine Woman's Own in the issues dated December 31, 1948 to January 21, 1949 with illustrations by K. J. Petts.
In the US, the story "Christmas Adventure" has not been published in book form.
The main collections in both markets are:
In addition, various collections have been published over the years which re-print short stories which have previously appeared in other collections - e.g. Surprise, Surprise! (1965 in the US). On occasion, besides the reprinted material these collections have sometimes contained the first book printing of an individual story - e.g. The Market Basing Mystery in the UK version of Thirteen for Luck! (1966) which later appeared in the same market in Poirot's Early Cases.