When the fabled Blue Train, the luxury overnight express to the Riviera, arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to awaken one of the passengers, Ruth Kettering. But the wealthy American socialite, who was on her way to meet a lover, is now a brutally disfigured corpse-and her valuable rubies, including the famous "Heart of Fire", are missing. Suspicion falls on Ruth's lover, the Comte de la Roche, and on her estranged husband, Derek. Called upon for his...

A century-old mystery takes Rostnikov halfway around the world In the waning days of the Russian Empire, the Czar inked a secret treaty with Japan that was stolen en route by one of the workmen on the Trans-Siberian Railway. More than a one hundred years later, the Soviet Union has gone the way of the Czardom, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is trying to find his way in the Russia of Vladimir Putin. A large amount of money is being sent from...

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...

"The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon...