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"Mary Roberts Rinehart, known for her bestselling mystery novels such as The Circular Staircase published in 1907, earned a reputation as ""the American Agatha Christie"" through the success of her novels. Yet Rinehart was also a WWI correspondent. After convincing her editor at The Saturday Evening Post to send her to the Belgian front, and armed with letters of introduction, her status as a well-known writer and member of the American Red Cross, as well as plenty of fearless initiative, she became the first American to report from the front. In Kings, Queens and Pawns (1915) Rinehart records scenes of life at, and far from, the front: a baby whose legs were blown off, a young soldier rendered blind in battle sitting quietly as he listens to a recording of Madama Butterfly, the entire noncombatant population of a Belgian town homeless after relentless German-lead bombings, a queen overseeing her Needlework Guild. Anticipating the ultimately widely held view of the bloody and often futile conflict, Rinehart argues that the greatest treasures of the warring countries, the young soldiers fighting so valiantly in the prime of their lives, are mere pawns wasted and lost on the desolate battlefields."

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Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) was a novelist and playwright best known for her mystery stories, which combined humor with ingenuity. The success of her novels The Circular Staircase and The Man in Lower Ten established her reputation as an important American mystery writer. At one time she was the highest paid writer in America. In addition to mysteries, she wrote comic tales, plays, romances, and travel books, some of which reflected her experiences as a correspondent during World War I. One critic called her autobiography, My Story, her finest book. Anne Marie Lewis combined her knowledge and experience gained from her BA in the Great Books from the University of Notre Dame, her Master of Music from Northwestern University, and her many years of performing on stage in theater, opera, and musical theater with her love of listening to audiobooks while commuting to and from rehearsals, and began narrating audiobooks in 2018. She lives with her husband and four sons in Chicago.

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