Reading level: 4 [red].

A mother’s worst nightmare: the subway doors close with her baby son still on the train. In this suspenseful debut novel, a woman goes to unimaginable lengths to get her child back. A struggling, single mother, Emma sometimes wishes that her thirteen-month-old son Ritchie would just disappear. Then, one quiet Sunday evening, after a sinister encounter on the London Underground—Ritchie does just that. Emma immediately reports his abduction to the police but there she faces a much worse situation than she ever imagined. Why do the police seem so reluctant to help her? And why do they think she would want hurt her own child? If Emma wants Ritchie back, she’ll have to find him herself. With the help of a stranger named Rafe, the one person who seems to believe her, Emma sets off in search of her son. She is determined to find Ritchie no matter what it takes…but who exactly is the real enemy here? "A heart-stopper” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) with dark twists and intertwining narratives, The Stranger on the Train is an unforgettable, “first-rate debut thriller” (Washington Post) that you will keep you guessing until the shattering finale.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 thriller based on the novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith (author of The Talented Mr. Ripley) is about two men who meet on a train: one is a man of high social standing who wishes to divorce his unfaithful wife; the other is an enigmatic bachelor with an overbearing father. Together they enter into a murder plot that binds them to one another, with fatal consequences. This Queer Film Classic delves into the homoerotic energy of the film, especially between the two male characters (played by Farley Granger and Robert Walker). It builds on the question of the sexuality the film puts on view, not to ask whether either character is gay so much as to explore the queer relations between sexuality and murder and the strong antisocial impulses those relations represent. The book also includes a look at the making of the film and the critical controversies over Hitchcock's representations of male homosexuality. QUEER FILM CLASSICS is a critically acclaimed film book series that launched in 2009. It features twenty-one of the most important and influential films about and/or by LGBTQ people, made in eight different countries between 1950 and 2005, and written by leading LGBTQ film scholars and critics. Jonathan Goldberg is a professor at Emory University, where he directs the Studies in Sexualities program. He is the author of many books and editor of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's posthumous 2012 book The Weather in Proust.

The book about America de Tocqueville might have written had he spent some time in the nation's smoking sections Using two cross-country trips on Amtrak as her narrative vehicles, British writer Jenny Diski connects the humming rails taking her into the heart of America with the track-like scars leading back to her own past. As she did in the highly acclaimed Skating to Antarctica, Diski has created a seamless and seemingly effortless amalgam of reflection and revelation. Stranger on a Train is a combination of travelogue and memoir, a penetrating portrait of America and Americans that is at the same time an unsparing look in the mirror. Traveling and remembering both involve confronting strangers—those we have just met and those we once were—and acknowledging the play of proximity and separation. Diski has written a moving, courageous, and deeply rewarding book about who we are, and the landscapes through which we have passed to get there.

Nancy and her friends take their detective skills on an Alaskan adventure in this second book of the Nancy Drew Diaries, a fresh approach to a classic series. Nancy’s Alaskan adventure continues as she, Bess, and George disembark the mystery-plagued Arctic Star cruise ship and explore the grand sites of the forty-ninth state: Skagway; the Yukon territory, and Denali National Park. It’s spectacular scenery, but things start to go wrong almost immediately, leading Nancy to believe that whoever was behind the unsolved mayhem aboard the ship has followed them onto dry land. The girl detectives had better watch their steps—they’re on uncharted and unknown territory!

In 1943, General Thadeus Dreyer, a WWI hero who trains doubles for Nazi leaders, disappears. In 1960, Adolf Eichmann, a master chess player, is arrested in Buenos Aires, extradited to Israel, and hanged. Years later, a dying Polish count casts doubt on Eichmann's identity, leaving behind a manuscript with clues that tie the three men together. A gripping novel of imposture and identity, Shadow Without a Name is a harrowing parable of our century of chaos, where individual will is swamped by the cult of personality and destinies hang on a game of chess.

A Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Daily Mail and Financial Times Best Book of 2020 Pick 'A highly enjoyable story about female resilience and finding fulfilment on your own terms' Sunday Times 'An irresistible summer read' Guardian Book of the Day 'A typically sharp and hugely satisfying page-turner' Daily Mail She's such a skilful storyteller' Bernardine Evaristo When Hannah is invited into the First-Class carriage of the London to Penzance train by Jinni, she walks into a spider's web. Now a poor young single mother, Hannah once escaped Cornwall to go to university. But once she married Jake and had his child, her dreams were crushed into bitter disillusion. Her husband has left her for Eve, rich and childless, and Hannah has been surviving by becoming a cleaner in London. Jinni is equally angry and bitter, and in the course of their journey the two women agree to murder each other's husbands. After all, they are strangers on a train - who could possibly connect them? But when Hannah goes to Jinni's husband's home the next night, she finds Stan, a huge, hairy, ugly drunk who has his own problems - not least the care of a half-ruined house and garden. He claims Jinni is a very different person to the one who has persuaded Hannah to commit a terrible crime. Who is telling the truth - and who is the real victim? Praise for Amanda Craig 'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' India Knight 'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' Sarah Perry 'Amanda Craig is one of the most brilliant and entertaining novelists now working in Britain' Alison Lurie