Road Trips

Camper under starry sky near Merritt. Photo. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/167_4035065/1/167_4035065/cite. Accessed 10 Feb 2017.

We've all had the road trip impulse, haven't we? That feeling of wanting to get the heck out of Dodge. To up sticks and seek out a change of climate. Who hasn't heard the siren song of the open road?  We are a nation of migrants, after all - whether it be immigrants coming to America, wagon trains heading west, or the Great Migration. And of course, here in Albuquerque, we live on Route 66 - the Mother Road, with all the travel magic that name invokes.

Writers from Walt Whitman to John Steinbeck to Jack Kerouac have all felt the urge to embark on that much-vaunted voyage of self-discovery, the road trip. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert took one in It Happened One Night, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper hit the road in Easy Rider, and Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise is a classic of the genre. But there are many reasons to take a road trip, many different routes, many destinations, and the journeys are all different. Take a virtual trip with one of the road trip stories listed below, and get away from it all without leaving the comfort of your armchair.Have you taken a road trip recently? Let us know in the comments!

Le Road Trip: A Traveler's Journal of Love and France by Vivian Swift

Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea by Erik Reece

The Trip: Andy Warhol's Plastic Fantastic Cross-Country Adventure by Deborah Davis

Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories From the Road by William Least Heat-Moon

Love That Boy: What Two Presidents, Eight Road Trips, and My Son Taught Me About a Parent's Expectations by Ron Fournier

Almost Anywhere: Road Trip Ruminations on Love, Nature, National Parks, and Nonsense by Krista Schlyer

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself : A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky

Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip by Matthew Algeo 

Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads by Paul Theroux

I Don't Care If We Never Get Back: 30 Games in 30 Days On the Best Worst Baseball Road Trip Ever by Ben Blatt and Eric Brewster

Live Your Road Trip Dream: Travel For a Year For the Cost of Staying Home by Phil and Carol White

Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways

Gun Guys: A Road Trip by Dan Baum

Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip [DVD]

Will Travel For Vegan Food: A Young Woman's Solo Van-Dwelling Mission to Break Free, Find Food & Make Love by Kristin M. Lajeunesse

The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America From Key West to the Arctic Ocean by Philip Caputo      

 

Sometimes we actually think we can completely move away from our troubles - that's called a geographic cure, except psychologists would argue that that's no cure at all. For those who don't want to plan a getaway, consider This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live. 😊

New & Novel: Hotels in Fiction & Film

A shoebox-sized hotel room less than two metres wide and costing 8,000 Yen ($80.00) in central Tokyo, Japan, Asia. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/151_2570146/1/151_2570146/cite. Accessed 30 Dec 2016.

The hotel is a seductive setting for a writer. It houses a wide spectrum of people who do not know each other, yet who spend nights under the same roof and are affected by one another's behaviour in ways they may not be conscious of: they hear each other's bathwater draining away, they catch snippets of conversations in the lifts. A couple in a hotel lobby might be lifelong partners, or lovers making the most of anonymity. A gang of three who arrive at 2am might be business colleagues who have just closed a deal in a different time zone, or murderers who've recently disposed of their victim.
~Mark Watson, "The top 10 hotel novels"

Hotels are fascinating places, and you don't have to be staying at an iconic establishment like the Chelsea Hotel or the Waldorf-Astoria, bunking with Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, staying at a rundown rooming-house with Ginsberg and Burroughs, or visiting the hotel at the end of the line for the Orient Express or the Ritz in Paris to appreciate the experience, whether you are relaxing in the lap of luxury or a checking in at a more prosaic lodging. (Although, even in New Mexico, you can stay at historic hotels, such as the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos and the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, and you can visit the Belen Harvey House Museum.) We have all heard stories about a variety of unusual hotel experiences, from meeting celebrities in the elevator to hotels finding 80 prosthetic limbs left by guests in one year to finding someone had marked up the walls of the room with "I'm watching you" in glow-in-the-dark pen, and don't we all know about refilling bottles in the minibar with water and tea and not to sleep on the bedspread?

We are reading The Woman In Cabin 10, which takes place on a cruise ship - similar to the hotel environment, but even more of a hothouse, since passengers are stuck together for the duration - and we're already thinking of the "upstairs, downstairs" view.  The interplay between passengers is interesting, but how will the staff below decks become involved? If you want to find out more about what happens behind the scenes at your favorite hostelry, try reading one of these non-fiction books:

Hotel Life: The Story of a Place Where Anything Can Happen by Caroline Field Levander & Matthew Pratt Guterl

Heads In Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality by Jacob Tomsky

How May We Hate You?: Notes From the Concierge Desk by Anna Drezen and Todd Dakotah Briscoe 

But we digress. Hotel guests can certainly get up to a fair amount of mayhem, and stories from staff do indicate that people do things in their hotel room that they wouldn't do at home. So, take a vacation from your life and get away from it all with these books and movies set (all or in part) in hotels, and see how wacky (or disturbing!) it can get!

Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris 

At Bertram's Hotel: A Miss Marple Mystery by Agatha Christie 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles 

Security by Gina Wohlsdorf 

The Bad News Bible by Anna Blundy 

In the Kitchen by Monica Ali

The Lady Matador's Hotel by Cristina Garcia

 

Hotel Vendome by Danielle Steel 

A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer 

Hotel World by Ali Smith 

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis 

Heartbreak Hotel by Deborah Moggach

Belle Ruin by Martha Grimes

The Hotel Riviera by Elizabeth Adler

Hotels of North America by Rick Moody

A Private Hotel For Gentle Ladies by Ellen Cooney

The Girl From the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor

At His Service by Suzanne Rock 

The Next Always by Nora Roberts 

Lucky Catch: A Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure by Deborah Coonts

She's Not There by Joy Fielding

The Mayakovsky Tapes by Robert Littell

French Coast by Anita Hughes 

Silver Bay by Jojo Moyes

Winter Street by Elin Hilderbrand 

The Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
 

DVDs

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Dirty Dancing

The Chambermaid

The Hangover

The Trip

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Lost in Translation

Fawlty Towers

Grand Hotel

5 to 7

Ocean's Eleven

A Five Star Life
 

Links

15 Elaborate Pop Culture Themed Hotel Rooms [Mental Floss]

The World's 10 most legendary luxury hotels [CNN]

18 wacky hotels in the United States [CNN]

The coolest hotel in every state (and DC!) [Thrillist]

New York, USA: Five unusual hotel experiences you'll never forget [Traveller]

The Craziest Things That Happened at Chateau Marmont [Complex]

10 Things You No Longer See in Hotels [Mental Floss]

14 of the Coolest Hotels in the World 2015 [Where Cool Things Happen]

Books for Your End-of-Summer Staycation Adventure!

There's still time to wring some more fun adventures out of the summer, without even leaving the state! We are still hoping to check out Tinkertown and Meow Wolf. The Santa Fe Opera's season continues until the end of August. Gallup's Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial is just around the corner, as is Santa Fe's Indian Market. All fun things, but maybe you have a more strenuous adventure in mind, or closer to nature? Camping, birding, hiking - there's a lot of scope for outdoor adventures here in the Land of Enchantment! We hope you'll take advantage of some of the resources the library catalog has to offer when planning your summer fun, whether it's outdoorsy or not so much! Here are some books you might helpful:

Camping

Camping in America's Western County and City Parks by Don Wright

Best Tent Camping, New Mexico: Your Car-Camping Guide to Scenic Beauty, the Sounds of Nature, and an Escape From Civilization by Monte Parr

Camping New Mexico: A Comprehensive Guide to Public Tent and RV Campgrounds by Melinda Crow 

Birding

Birding Hot Spots of Santa Fe, Taos, and Northern New Mexico by Judy Liddell and Barbara Hussey

Winging It: A Beginner's Guide to Birds of the Southwest by Catherine Coulter ... [et al.]

Hiking

Hiking Four Corners: A Guide to the Areas' Greatest Hiking Adventures by J. D. Tanner and Emily Ressler-Tanner 

Hiking to History: A Guide to Off-Road New Mexico Historic Sites by Robert Julyan 

Best Hikes Near Albuquerque by JD Tanner and Emily Ressler-Tanner 

New Mexico Wilderness Alliance Wild Guide, 2014 edited by Tina Deines

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles Albuquerque: Including Santa Fe, Mount Taylor, and San Lorenzo Canyon by Stephen Ausherman

Cycling

Best Bike Rides Albuquerque and Santa Fe: A Guide to the Greatest Recreational Rides in the Area by J. D. Tanner, Emily Ressler-Tanner, and Shey Lambert

Mountain Biking Northern New Mexico: A Guide to Northern New Mexico's Greatest Off-Road Bicycle Rides by Bob D'Antonio 
 

Miscellaneous Adventure

Walking Albuquerque: 30 Tours of the Duke City's Historic Neighborhoods, Ditch Trails, Urban Nature, and Public Art by Stephen Ausherman

By the Way--: A Guide to New Mexico's 25 Scenic Byways by Laurie Evans Frantz, Lesley S. King, Marti Niman

Roadside New Mexico: A Guide to Historic Markers by David Pike

The Basic New Mexico Bucket List: 100 Things To Do in New Mexico Before You Die by by Barbe Awalt

Off the Beaten Path New Mexico: A Guide to Unique Places by Nicky Leach

Signs & Shrines: Spiritual Journeys Across New Mexico by Sharon Niederman

A Spy's Guide to Santa Fe and Albuquerque by E.B. Held

Touring New Mexico Hot Springs by Matt Bischoff

Backroads & Byways of New Mexico: Drives, Day Trips & Weekend Excursions by Sally Moore

Light, Landscape, and the Creative Quest: Early Artists of Santa Fe; with, Walking in the Path of the Artists: A Guide Booklet to the Artists' Homes by Stacia Lewandowski      


Want more ideas? There's always the New Mexico Tourism Department. Or, check out a Museum Discovery Pass from a library branch near you - some of them are expiring at the end of the month. In September, you might also check out: ¡Globalquerque!, The Pie Town Pie Festival, or The State Fair. Do you have any last minute summer fun plans? Let us know your destination in the comments!

Picture credit:

New Mexico.. Photography. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 26 Jul 2016.
http://quest.eb.com/search/137_3080670/1/137_3080670/cite

 

Literary Tourism: Beverly Cleary

Ramona at the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden

Children's author Beverly Cleary will turn 99 on April 12! She grew up in Yamhill and Portland, Oregon.  Her books are set in Portland - Henry Huggins and the Quimbys live on Klickitat Street, a few blocks from where Cleary grew up - and though the author no longer resides in Oregon, Portland celebrates her with the elementary school and children's room in the Central Library that bear her name. Visitors to Portland, Oregon have shared with us their trip to the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden, right around the corner from Klickitat Street. You can also stop at the Hollywood Library to pick up a map of the Walking With Ramona tour. Multnomah County Library says "Beverly Cleary now resides in California but her influence is always local for us."

Beverly Cleary started writing for children in 1950, and has written more than 20 books with some of children's literature's most memorable characters, and her birthday is celebrated as National Drop Everything And Read Day. If you'd like to learn more about the author, Beverly Cleary has also written 2 memoirs:

A Girl From Yamhill

Follows the popular children's author from her childhood years in Oregon through high school and into young adulthood, highlighting her family life and her growing interest in writing.

My Own Two Feet

Follows the popular children's author through college years during the Depression; jobs including that of librarian; marriage; and writing and publication of her first book, Henry Huggins.

Gresham Library Ramona Quimby statue, courtesy of Multnomah County Library Flickr

Links

A Beverly Cleary Pilgrimage, From Yamhill to Klickitat Street [The Atlantic]

The Ageless Appeal of Beverly Cleary [New York Times]

12 Charming Tidbits About Beverly Cleary [Mental Floss]

The World of Beverly Cleary

Beverly Cleary - Living Legend

Author Beverly Cleary's childhood home for sale

*book descriptions are taken from the library catalog unless otherwise noted

Come Fly With Me

Are you traveling by air this holiday season? Travel in the past has seemed so glamorous - loading your steamer trunk onto a passenger ship (unless, of course, it's the Titanic, Lusitania, or other famous disaster), flying in a propeller plane.  Maybe we've watched old movies too many times, or too many Indiana Jones movies (where you see Indy's itinerary traced out on a map), but in our heads, every time we get on our plane and sit in our economy class seat and are served our lackluster airplane meal (if we get one), it's a bit disappointing.  Whether you are an armchair traveler or heading out into the wild blue yonder this season - well, you can dream, can't you?  Or, at least, check out what travel was really like in the past.

Jet Set: The People, The Planes, The Glamour, and The Romance in Aviation's Glory Years  by William Stadiem

In October 1958, Pan American World Airways began making regularly scheduled flights between New York and Paris, courtesy of its newly minted wonder jet, the Boeing 707. Almost overnight, the moneyed celebrities of the era made Europe their playground. At the same time, the dream of international travel came true for thousands of ordinary Americans who longed to emulate the "jet set" lifestyle. Bestselling author and Vanity Fair contributor William Stadiem brings that Jet Age dream to life again in the first-ever book about the glamorous decade when Americans took to the skies in massive numbers as never before, with the rich and famous elbowing their way to the front of the line. Dishy anecdotes and finely rendered character sketches re-create the world of luxurious airplanes, exclusive destinations, and beautiful, wealthy trendsetters who turned transatlantic travel into an inalienable right. 

Airline: Style at 30,000 Feet 

written and designed by Keith Lovegrove

This fascinating book examines every aspect of airline style, from the company liveries and interior designs of planes to advertising, haute couture and airborne haute cuisine. Divided into four sections covering fashion, food, interior design and identity, Airline shows how airborne culture has changed since the 1920s. The book spans the conservative to the outrageous, from saris to hotpants, from Hugh Hefner's private jet to the huge Airbus A380. A wide selection of retro styles are illustrated with illuminating archive material and images of ephemera. Airline uncovers the style, image and experience of the parallel universe that exists at 39,000 feet.   *book blurbs are taken from the catalog unless otherwise noted  Links   Take a One-Way Trip from Tatty to Natty [Slate]   All Aboard AirBnB's Airplane Apartment [Messy Nessy Chic]   Come Fly Away [RL Magazine]   What It Was Really Like to Fly During the Golden Age of Travel [Fast Company]  Forget 1960, The Golden Age Is Now [New York Times]   The Endless Holiday [Vanity Fair]  

Two-Wheeled Travel

This summer, NPR is approaching travel in a different way:

Who needs destinations? This summer, we're focusing on the journey. All these books — some old, some new — will transport you: by train, plane, car, bike, boat, foot, city transit, horse, balloon, rocket ship, time machine, and even the odd giant peach. Bon voyage! (Taxes and fees not included).*

We have taken the liberty of compiling some of their recommended two-wheeled titles for you here, along with a few of our own - as a nod to the ongoing Tour de France - but check the links below for more!

Adults

The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance by David V. Herlihy

Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride by Peter Zheutlin

French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France by Tim Moore [eAudiobook]

Life is a Wheel: Love, Death, Etc., and a Bike Ride Across America by Bruce Weber

The Land of Second Chances: The Impossible Rise of Rwanda's Cycling Team by Tim Lewis

Archangel: Fiction by Andrea Barrett

It's All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels by Robert Penn

Svetat e golyam i spasenie debne otvsyakade = The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner [DVD]  


Kids

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Hero on a Bicycle by Shirley Hughes

Wheels of Change : How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way) by Sue Macy

Tillie the Terrible Swede: How One Woman, a Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed History by Sue Stauffacher 


Links

Book Your Trip: Tales of Two-Wheeled Travel - A Literary List to Cycle Through*

Vroom, Vroom, Hmmmm: Motorcycles at Literary Metaphor

Armchair Travel: A Well-Grounded Sense of Place

Great travel writing consists of equal parts curiosity, vulnerability and vocabulary. It is not a terrain for know-it-alls or the indecisive. The best of the genre can simply be an elegant natural history essay, a nicely writ sports piece, or a well-turned profile of a bar band and its music. A well-grounded sense of place is the challenge for the writer. We observe, we calculate, we inquire, we look for a link between what we already know and what we're about to learn. The finest travel writing describes what's going on when nobody's looking.
~Tom Miller, "Under the Skin of a Locale: Tucson's Tom Miller Explains What Makes Great Travel Writing"

There's truly an art to writing about travel. The books listed below seek to be more than a guide book, but less than a scholarly treatise about a place; more fleshed out than a journal, more cohesive than a selection of essays (although there are some great travel essays out there). None of the books listed were recent blockbusters, but they all have literary merit. Many are windows, not only to another place, but back in time to another era. All have in common the author's immersion into local cultures. As the author Roxanne Reid says, "A traveller moves among real people in their own milieu and learns from them, soaking up their wisdom and philosophy, their way of being in the world. A tourist simply hops from one tourist highpoint to another, skimming across the surface, cramming in quantity rather than quality, and comes away with his soul and imagination unchanged, untouched by the wonder of a life lived differently." 

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia by Rebecca West

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux [eBook]

Nowhere is a Place: Travels in Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux

Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

An Area of Darkness by V. S. Naipaul

As They Were by M.F.K. Fisher

The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat by Ryszard Kapuciski

Letters From Egypt: A Journey on the Nile, 1849-1850 by Florence Nightingale

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson   

Great Plains by Ian Frazier

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

"The Muses are Heard", from Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

"Sea and Sardinia", from D.H. Lawrence and Italy by D.H. Lawrence

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople - From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube by Patrick Leigh Fermor

An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie

West With the Night by Beryl Markham

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakaeur

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey with His Son by Peter Carey

Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald

My 'Dam Life: Three Years in Holland by Sean Condon

Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India by Anita Jain


List compiled with assistance from the article "35 Great Travel Books That Will Take You Around the World Without a Plane Ticket".

Armchair Adventures: Voyages Around the World

Some days, don't you just want to get away from it all?  Well, for those of us without imminent travel plans, here's a few armchair travel titles to help you get away from it all...or to help you get inspired to take a long, long vacation!

Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race around the World by Matthew Goodman

The Man Who Cycled the World by Mark Beaumont [eBook only in our catalog]

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, The High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe by Glynis Ridley

Wild Romance: A Victorian Story of a Marriage, a Trial, and a Self-Made Woman by Chloë Schama

The Lost Girls: Three Friends, Four Continents, One Unconventional Detour Around the World by Jennifer Baggett

Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride by Peter Zheutlin

The Scent Trail: How One Woman's Quest for the Perfect Perfume Took Her Around the World by Celia Lyttelton

Adventures of a Continental Drifter: An Around-the-World Excursion into Weirdness, Danger, Lust, and the Perils of Street Food by Elliott Hester

Fair Wind and Plenty of It: A Modern-Day Tall Ship Adventure by Rigel Crockett



Feeling inspired?  Consider consulting the books below before you go!


Life is a Trip: The Transformative Magic of Travel by Judith Fein

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

First-Time Around the World

The World from Your Armchair: Literary Travel Books You Won't Want to Miss!

Here at abcreads we are inveterate armchair adventurers.  So when we spied Booklist's series of Top 10 Literary Travel Books, we had to share some of the titles with you!   You'll think you've been there, or you'll want to go!


Crazy River: A Journey to the Source of the Nile by Richard Grant

The Ice Balloon: S.A. Andrée and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration by Alec Wilkinson

Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left it, and Long for It by Craig Taylor

The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels by Richard Paul Roe

The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes by Scott Wallace

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War by Annia Ciezadlo

India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking by Anand Giridharadas

Molotov's Magic Lantern: Travels in Russian History by Rachel Polonsky

Saved by Beauty: An American Romantic in Iran by Roger Housden

The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road by Paul Theroux

To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron


You might also enjoy:

Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa  [eBook]

The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down by Andrew McCarthy

Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day: One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide by Doug Mack

Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places by Andrew Blackwell

Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, An Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People who Make This Country Work by Jeanne Marie Laskas

Le Road Trip: A Traveler's Journal of Love and France by Vivian Swift

A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez

Mysteries Set on Trains

Train travel.

Hours or days spent in close contact with strangers, in a long line of enclosed but connected spaces. An odd little temporary community, that will break apart at the final stop.

Or lose members along the way to intermediate stops.

Or to murder.

Many classic works of mystery have used railways as a setting. This post will help you explore the rolling world of the train mystery.

---

Of course, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) comes first to mind for many as the train murder mystery, setting the style for many later works. But you might not know that Christie did another mystery set on a train, also involving her famous detective Hercule Poirot, The Mystery of the Blue Train.

One of Christie's Miss Marple stories also revolves around a train ride, the 4:50 from Paddington.

---

 

While more of a thriller than a mystery, Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, made into the film of the same title by Alfred Hitchcock, perfectly exploits the "intimate stranger" aspect of shared rail travel as the basis for a chilling tale.

---

Sheldon Russell's Hook Runyon is a "yard dog", a "railroad bull" -- security hired to police the rail yards and station. Unfit for military service because he is shy an arm, Hook lives in a caboose and becomes involved in mysteries in the gritty world of hobos, pickpockets, and moonshiners, sometimes traveling further afield to solve crimes out along the rails. Set in the 1940s, toward the end of World War II.

 

The Hook Runyon series:

1. The Yard Dog

2. The Insane Train

3. Dead Man's Tunnel

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Young railway porter Jim Stringer moves to an early-1900s London to better himself. But the world of the railroads in the big city is a far cry from his younger days, and he finds himself embroiled in an environment of thieves, saboteurs, and intrigue. Jim works his way up to Railway Detective, following adventures and crimes along the rails.

 

 



The Jim Stringer, Steam Detective series
by Andrew Martin:

1. The Necropolis Railway (2002)
2. The Blackpool Highflyer (2004)
3. The Lost Luggage Porter (2006)
4. Murder At Deviation Junction (2007)
5. Death on a Branch Line (2008)
6. The Last Train to Scarborough (2009)
7. The Somme Stations (2011)
8. The Baghdad Railway Club (2012)

---

---

 Mysteries Set on Trains

 



Lilian Jackson Braun - The Cat Who Blew the Whistle
Michael Crichton - The Great Train Robbery
Agatha Christie - 4:50 from Paddington, Murder on the Orient Express, The Mystery of the Blue Train
Mary Daheim - Loco motive : a bed-and-breakfast mystery
Dianne Day - Death Train to Boston: a Fremont Jones mystery
Carola Dunn - Murder on the Flying Scotsman
Dick Francis - The Edge
Kerry Greenwood - Murder on the Ballarat train : a Phryne Fisher mystery
Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train (made into the Hitchcock film)
Alfred Hitchcock, director - Strangers on a Train, The Lady Vanishes (film, based on the book The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White)
Jim Lehrer - Super
Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy
Andrew Martin - Jim Stringer series
Ian Rankin - Tooth and Nail: an Inspector Rebus novel
Sharon Rowse - The Silk Train Murder : a mystery of the Klondike
Sheldon Russell - Dead Man's Tunnel, The Insane Train, The Yard Dog
Michele Scott - Corked by Cabernet
Dan Simmons - Drood
Nicola Upson - An expert in murder : a new mystery featuring Josephine Tey
Ethel Lina White - The Wheel Spins (basis for the film The Lady Vanishes)

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The title of the first book in Edward Marston's Inspector Robert Colbeck series says it all: The Railway Detective. Set in a murky 1850s London, the ten books of the series presents Colbeck (who comes to be known as "The Railway Detective" for his successes solving crimes committed along the rails) with a wide variety of challenges. Rich with period detail, and lots of gritty action.

The library currently has only the first book of the series in the collection.

If you read the first book and enjoy it you may request

that the other titles be added,

or utilize our ILL (Inter Library Loan) service.

 

Click here to log in and suggest a purchase.  

 

The Inspector Robert Colbeck series:

 

1. The  Railway Detective (2004)

2. The Excursion Train (2005)

3. The Railway Viaduct (2006)

4. The Iron Horse (2007)

5. Murder on the Brighton Express (2008)

6. The Silver Locomotive Mystery (2009)

7. Railway to the Grave (2010)

8. Blood on the Line (2011)

9. The Stationmaster's Farewell (2012)

10. Peril on the Royal Train (2013)

 

________________________________________________________

 

Visit the Railroads in New Mexico Libguide. 

Literary Tourism: Rome & Paris

We've written before at abcreads about literary tourism, but now we've finally done some!  This spring (we're a little behind in our report), your intrepid abcreads reporter journeyed to Europe.  Amongst the myriad of things to do in Paris & Rome, we found time for a bt of literary sightseeing.

Rome:


The Keats - Shelley House is right beside the Spanish Steps! The English Romantic poets were very smitten with Rome, & this site, 26 Piazza di Spagna, "is most famous for being the final resting place of John Keats, who died here in 1821, aged just 25, and to this day Keats’s bedroom is preserved as a shrine to his tragic story".  This is a small museum, but chock full of books & memorabilia.

Not strictly literary, but cool:



These posters were dotted throughout Rome, indicating that a movie had been filmed in the area & telling you a bit about the film.  Roman Holiday fans might guess that this sign was around the corner from La Bocca della Verità.

Paris:

It may seem morbid to some, but I can't imagine visiting Paris without stopping at their famous cemeteries, a stop at both Montparnasse & Père Lachaise were in order.








The tomb of Oscar Wilde has had to be surrounded by plastic to protect it.






Our "Latin Quarter Literary Loop" walking tour, recommended by Lonely Planet, included sites such as  Sartre & de Beauvoir's hang-outs (Les Deux Magots & Café de Flore),  #56 Rue Jacob - in 1783 treaty recognizing  American independence was signed;  the original Shakespeare & Company bookstore owned by Sylvia Beach; the home of Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas (27 rue de Fleurus); & the literary cafés of Montparnasse (Le Dôme, Select', La Rotonde).












Have you done any literary sightseeing, or do you have any in mind?  Other books we consulted for our trip included Walks in Hemingway's Paris: A Guide to Paris for the Literary Traveler by Noel Riley Fitch and Forever Paris: 25 Walks in the Footsteps of the City's Most Illustrious Figures by Christina Henry de Tessan.  If you know any other good reads for the literary tourist, let us know!

Also see: "A Google Maps Tour of Famous Authors' Homes".  We walked by the site of Hemingway's apartment, too!