In the words of Alexander McCall Smith: 'You feel the rocking of the train, you hear the sound of its wheels on the rails; you are in the world rather than suspended somewhere above it. And sometimes there are conversations to be had, which is what the overarching story in this collection is all about. It is a simple device: people brought together entertain one another with tales of what happened to them on trains. It takes place on a journey I frequently...

"On a famous Australian train between Darwin and Adelaide for the Mystery Writers' Society one of the attendees is murdered for real"-- "When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The...

A big train and a little train travel from Kalamazoo to Timbuctoo.

Cutthroat competition between railroad companies to lay track through the Royal Gorge Territory is threatening to escalate into all-out war. If one man can bring peace, it's half-Lakota lawman, Joshua Strongheart.

"From the boiler to the coupling, build a steam train along with an engineer and her workers"-- Let's build a little train to chug along the track that goes from here to there and circles round and back! Simple rhyming text explains the parts of a steam train, and how one works. -- adapted from jacket and perusal of book

Del Wensley, wife of the most celebrated preacher in Harlan County, tries to mind her place. Until her husband's infidelity pushes an already strained marriage to a breaking point. Clinging to her last hope for self-respect, Del turns her back on the rigid life she's known. A coal train is rolling through the valley. With her eyes wide open to the unfamiliar, and to the freedom she craves, Del takes to the rails. Rumbling across America, Del is soon...

"Trans-Pecos had been running into unexpected difficulties while trying to complete its line across the Drifting Sands country. Besides the ordinary hazards of laying track across that wild section of West Texas, it had had to contend with Slash Hanlon's outlaw gang. The last two payrolls had been held up, and the workers at Eagle Camp at the end of the tracks had quit work and were threatening to riot if they were not paid. So when Shad Jones arrived...