Literature - By the Numbers Trivia Quiz

"Towards Zero" doesn't feature either of Christie's famous sleuths - Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. Instead the sleuth is another of her recurring characters, Superintendent Battle. The elderly Lady Tressilian is found murdered and Battle is called to investigate the case.

This novel has one of the best known opening lines of all time - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Set before and during the French Revolution, the plot follows the lives of a French doctor, Manette and his daughter. The two cities referenced in the title are Paris and London.

"Twelfth Night" is a Shakespearean play in the romantic comedy genre. It is believed that the play was written to be performed during the Twelfth Night which signals the end of the Christmas period, and hence the title. Twins Viola and Sebastian are separated during a shipwreck. What follows is a series of comedic events brought about by disguises and mistaken identities.

This Joseph Heller novel gave rise to the term "Catch 22", which defines a paradoxical situation that a person cannot get out of. A common example given to explain this is a person needing a job to gain experience but all jobs mandating experience as a qualification. The novel is set during World War II and satirizes the abuse of power.

"The Thirty-Nine Steps" was written by Scottish author James Buchan. Richard Hannay, the lead character, then goes on to make an appearance in four more novels of the series. Hannay manages to get entangled with a spy ring and then ends up on the run trying to save his life.

The book was adapted multiple times for film, the most famous being the version by Alfred Hitchcock, though his movie deviated significantly from the original plot.

The title "84, Charing Cross Road" refers to the address of a bookstore in London, England. Helene Hanff first contacted the store in 1949 to order a book she couldn't find in her city of New York. This was the start of a twenty year correspondence between her and the chief buyer of the book store. Set in epistolary form, the book is a memoir of this relationship.

It has since been adapted across various mediums including film, television and the stage.

Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez is well-known for popularizing the magic realism style of writing within Latin American literature. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is set in the fictional town of Macondo and follows multiple generations of Buendia family. The novel was originally written in Spanish but has since been translated into over forty languages.

This dystopian novel envisages a world where books are a threat because of the ideas and knowledge they give people. Firemen are therefore employed to burn books deemed harmful. The title is derived from the temperature at which paper burns - "Fahrenheit 451".

Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini rose to fame with his debut novel, "The Kite Runner". "A Thousand Splendid Suns" was his second novel and also set in Afghanistan. Unlike "The Kite Runner" which had a father-son relationship at its core, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" focusses on the relationship between two women, who through a twist of fate are married to the same man.

"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" is a science fiction adventure novel originally written by Jules Verne in French. He is also famous for other novels in the same genre like "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and "Around the World in 80 Days".

In "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", the antagonist Captain Nemo, imprisons the main characters aboard his submarine. Verne's description of a submarine and its capabilities were far ahead of the time the novel was written.