“Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect” by Benjamin Stevenson was the coolest whodunit I’ve read in 2024. Right from the start, I was hooked by the confined setting (a moving train) and its quirky ensemble of passengers, where each traveler harbors a deep-guarded secret. The story was outrageously funny and suspenseful at times, and each new clue forced me to reevaluate who could be responsible. Its fast-paced narrative kept me guessing right up to its satisfying conclusion. “Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect” was as fun as it was exhilarating: a witty page-turner that mixes comedy and crime in a way that’s completely new and refreshing.
From the bestselling author of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, a fiendishly fun locked room (train) murder mystery that "offers a tip of the hat to the great Agatha Christie novel while at the same time being a modern reinvention of it" (Nita Prose) -- perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz
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…
I have always loved history, from ancient Egyptian times up to recent history (the 1950s and 1960s). Put history in the context of a crime and the history becomes even more fascinating. A book where the history of that time comes vividly alive for the reader is the greatest pleasure a reader can experience.
Edward Marston’s Railway Detective books, set in Victorian England and featuring Inspector Colbeck, have become under-the-wire best sellers internationally. This book features a dozen short stories where he and his sergeant investigate crimes happening in different railway companies. It is a wonderful introduction to the whole Railway Detective series and these short stories can be savored at leisure as a starter for the main course of the full-length novels.
An eagerly awaited collection of brand new, specially commissioned short stories from the master of historical crime fiction Edward Marston, featuring his quick-witted Railway Detective, Inspector Robert Colbeck.
In this thrilling selection of stories, a young porter is found dead in a coal tub; Colbeck devises a trap to catch a thief; and a burnt train carriage holds a gruesome secret in a small coastal village. As Colbeck and his trusty aide Sergeant Victor Leeming begin to piece together clues and motives for each crime, it becomes clear the pair must stay a step ahead of the culprits to solve…
As a writer of suspense/thrillers and psychological thrillers, I’ve always loved thrillers and suspense books where I can’t guess the ending. And this list of books is additionally close to my heart because of the way they made me feel when I read them: breathless; restless to know how they were going to end; and most of all, they made me think about and question the psychology of the characters. I hope you will like them as much as I did!
A multiple POV thriller that kept me up all night. This book awed me with its multiple POVs combined with unreliability and timeline jumps.
As the book shifted from one POV to the other and from one timeline to another, I loved how the author weaved in the backstories of the characters by showing the impact it had on the present timeline.
The writing. The style, the words used, and the way the sentences spun the story is something I still think about, years after I first read this book. It drew me in, lulled me into a false sense of security, then sprung a small nugget of what really happened. A brilliant tactic.
The #1 New York Times bestseller, USA Today Book of the Year and now a major motion picture starring Emily Blunt.
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple having breakfast on their deck. She's even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
I am a Yorkshire writer with a passion for historical fiction. My love of history came as a surprise to me in my late teens, as I had originally thought history was not my thing. However, I soon discovered the incredible stories throughout history, and how many authors carve fictional stories around these time periods or historical events. I love researching for my own historical writing, whether it be to find out what kind of jobs people did, or what they ate for breakfast. I love reading and writing historical fiction in multiple eras, such as WW2, Victorian times, and further back to the Romans and ancient Egyptians.
I have always loved reading crime detective books, no matter what time period they are set in. However, The Railway Detective series manages to merge two of my favourite genres, crime and historical. Set in the mid-1800s when railways were still relatively new, this series has a brilliant set of characters and is written so brilliantly that you can picture every scene in your mind down to the last detail.
In 1851 England, the city of London anticipates the grand opening of the Great Expedition. Excitement is mounting with each engineering triumph of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating. A sudden attack hits the London to Birmingham mail train and it is looted and derailed. Planned with military precision, Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck fights to untangle a web of murder, blackmail and destruction. As Colbeck closes in on the criminal masterminds, events take an unexpected turn when the beautiful Madeline, daughter of the injured train driver, becomes a pawn in the criminals game. With time running out, good…
I took my first cross-country train ride with my mom when I was seven years old. That gave me the train bug. Since then, I’ve been across the United States three times via rail, across Europe, and all over northern India with my husband, too. I think train travel is a very special way to see a place. You’re going past backyards and back roads. You see the whole landscape, and you meet so many people you wouldn’t otherwise. I’ve never set out to write a “train book,” but trains play an important role in two of my three novels. I can’t get away from them, even in my imagination.
Rydr is on her way from California to Chicago via rail, to meet a relative who will take care of her now that her grandmother no longer can. What I love most about this book—aside from the fact that it takes place on the California Zephyr, one of my very favorite train rides in the world—is that Rydr’s experience is so influenced by the strangers she meets on the train. That’s why I love train travel so much: you never know who you’re going to meet. And you almost always end up sharing a meal and a story with someone you would never have met otherwise.
A beautifully poignant debut perfect for fans of authors such as Rebecca Stead and Sharon Creech and books like Ali Benjamin's The Thing About Jellyfish. When Rydr travels by train from Los Angeles to Chicago, she learns along the way that she can find family wherever she is. Rydr is on a train heading east, leaving California, where her gramma can't take care of her anymore, and traveling to Chicago, to live with an unknown relative. She brings with her a backpack, memories both happy and sad, and a box, containing something very important. As Rydr meets her fellow passengers…
I took my first cross-country train ride with my mom when I was seven years old. That gave me the train bug. Since then, I’ve been across the United States three times via rail, across Europe, and all over northern India with my husband, too. I think train travel is a very special way to see a place. You’re going past backyards and back roads. You see the whole landscape, and you meet so many people you wouldn’t otherwise. I’ve never set out to write a “train book,” but trains play an important role in two of my three novels. I can’t get away from them, even in my imagination.
I read Monisha Rajesh’s earlier travel memoir, Around India in 80 Trains, while planning my own train journey in India. In this one, she circumvents the entire globe (technically more than once in terms of mileage). It’s the kind of book I wish I’d written myself because I would love to do a train journey like this! I love Rajesh’s descriptions of the places she passes through and the people she meets along the way, and of course, how it changes her to see the world through this lens.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER AWARD FOR BEST TRAVEL BOOK
SHORTLISTED FOR THE STANFORD DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
'Monisha Rajesh has chosen one of the best ways of seeing the world. Never too fast, never too slow, her journey does what trains do best. Getting to the heart of things. Prepare for a very fine ride' Michael Palin
From the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet's Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Around the World in 80 Trains is a celebration of the glory of train travel and a witty and irreverent look at the…
I think of my imagination as a living thing that I have a working, evolving relationship with. I try to access that creative flow state through automatic drawing and something about that process seems to help me in my daily life. I draw every day. I make art zines, comics, fine art, album art, and collaborative works. The books in this list all feel personally important to me and are works I return to and think about often.
One of the most meditative books I’ve ever experienced. I read this for the first time on an airplane and it felt like having a lucid dream. It’s an entirely wordless graphic novel documenting all the details and experienced moments of a train ride, from finding a seat, to the patterns of rain on the windows and the passing landscapes, all rendered in highly stylized but clear line work. This book left me wanting to notice and appreciate my own movement through the physical spaces of my daily life. I recommend anything you can find by Yokoyama, but this one feels especially important to me.
I am a presidential historian with a particular focus on their deaths, public mourning, and the places we commemorate them. My interest in what I like to think of as “the final chapter of each president’s amazing story” grew out of frustration with traditional biographies that end abruptly when the president dies, and I believe my books pick up where others leave off. More than a moribund topic, I find the presidential deaths and public reaction to be both fascinating and critical to understanding their humanity and place in history at the time of their passing and how each of their legacies evolved over time.
Robert Klara provides so much detail and insight that it’s like he was on Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral train, crouched down in the seat behind the new president, Harry S. Truman!
I was super impressed by Klara’s research and ability to capture the conversations and historical nuances of one of the most important train rides of the twentieth century.
In April 1945, the funeral train carrying the body of Franklin D. Roosevelt embarked on a three-day, thousand-mile odyssey through nine states before reaching the president's home where he was buried. Many who would recall the journey later would agree it was a foolhardy idea to start with - putting every important elected figure in Washington on a single train during the biggest war in history. For the American people, of course, the funeral train was just that - the train bearing the body of deceased FDR. It passed with darkened windows; few gave thought to what might be happening…
This is Paul Theroux’s travels around the coast of Britain in the 1980s.
It’s a true artist’s journey – he writes about whatever interests him, intrigues him, astonishes him, amuses him, and often what depresses him, from ugly holiday camps to grotesquely flirty hotel landladies, to train strikes. It’s not a pretty travelogue, more a close observation of decay and ruin, with the Falklands War glimpsed through news headlines, adding to the overall sense of an unstoppable cosmic engine of change and loss.
His prose is honest, graceful, and vivid, with a great ear for character and dialogue. All in all, an unexpectedly moving experience.
Award winning writer Paul Theroux embarks on a journey that, though closer to home than most of his expeditions, uncovers some surprising truths about Britain and the British people in the '80s in The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain.
Paul Theroux's round-Britain travelogue is funny, perceptive and 'best avoided by patriots with high blood pressure...'
After eleven years living as an American in London, Paul Theroux set out to travel clockwise round the coast and find out what Britain and the British are really…
My first travel memoir, Finding Myself in Borneo, has won three awards. I hold a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Communication from Florida State University. I worked internationally for 45 years, becoming an expert in the field of communication for social change. I directed and produced a number of award-winning documentary films/videos, popular multimedia initiatives, and have written numerous articles and books in my field. I worked and lived in Asia, Africa, and Russia for a total of 18 years and traveled to over 80 countries on short-term assignments. In 2015, I settled in New Mexico, using my varied experiences, memories, and imagination in creative writing.
When I retired from my 45-year career as an international filmmaker and multimedia producer, I decided to concentrate on creative nonfiction writing, using my experiences and memories as a basis for the many stories I wanted to tell. I began to read and listen to travel memoirs to learn how to write in a captivating and entertaining way. Paul Theroux is one of the top writers in this genre and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is one of his best. He doesn’t make it to Borneo, but reaches many familiar places I traveled to during my years in Southeast Asia. I love his style, full of descriptions of those old haunts, and his dialog with the people he encounters on his journey.
Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is a journey from London to Asia by train.
Winner of the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award 2020
Thirty years ago Paul Theroux left London and travelled across Asia and back again by train. His account of the journey - The Great Railway Bazaar - was a landmark book and made his name as the foremost travel writer of his generation. Now Theroux makes the trip all over again. Through Eastern Europe, India and Asia to discover the changes that have swept the continents, and also to learn what…
