China is to publish a set of mystery stories by Agatha Christie to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of the British whodunit author, Sun Shunlin, director of the project department of the People's Literature Publishing House(PLPH), announced here Saturday.

They will be the first "legal" translated copies of her stories in China.

There are dozens of print versions of the author's masterpieces available in underground markets in the country, but they are all pirated versions.

The illegal printing of unauthorized works contravenes China's intellectual property protection law, Sun said.

PLPH, China's most authoritative publisher of literature, bought the copyright for publishing Christie's works in simplified Chinese characters.

The copyright was granted by Agatha Christie's agent in Britain, Sun said, adding that the PLPH will invite prestigious translators and editors to translate the author's works.

According to Sun, a first collection of 14 stories by Agatha Christie, who died in 1976, will include famous tales such as Death on the Nile, Murder in the Calais Coach and Hercule Poirot.

Another 32 works of Agatha Christie, including The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Murder on the Orient Express, will be translated into Chinese and published by PLPH in 2007.

Well known for the movie made from her masterpiece Death on the Nile and the character of Hercule Poirot that she created, world-famous Agatha Christie has been dubbed the "Empress of the Whodunit".

Her works have millions of fans the world over. Readers were keen to get access to a "legal" version of her stories, Sun said.

"The PLPH will offer Agatha Christie fans in China a panorama of her world of mystery," Sun said.

After beginning her writing career with The Mysterious Affair at Styles in the 1920s, Agatha Christie wrote over 80 novels and short story collections, over a dozen plays and six romantic novels under the pseudonym "Mary Westmacott".

Her books, which have sold over a billion copies in English and over a billion copies when translated into foreign languages, have only been outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare.

Agatha Christie (1891-1976) was born in Torquay, in Devon, in the southwest of England. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1971 and died in January 1976 in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

(Xinhua News Agency Dec. 23, 2006)