Nick McArdle

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 the cases. With a new suspect at every turn, can the duo unearth the real villains?

The body of a woman is found in an Edinburgh close and the police label it as a random act of violence, until Detective Constable Faro finds a playing card, the nine of diamonds, planted on the corpse. His superiors scoff at his suspicions, but days later a man is attacked in the street, and left with the nine of diamonds in his pocket. Faro seizes on the connection, but what is it that links the victims? Beset by hostile superiors and a policehating public, Faro feels he may never crack this confounding case.

Spring, 1858. The route of the Caledonian Railway through the southern uplands of the Scottish countryside is disrupted by a fatal crash. Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming are called from the crime of London to investigate, and must contend with old enemy Superintendent Rory McTurk to uncover the criminals behind the disaster. The motive for the crash is unclear, with suspects including the North British Railway, a group of sabbatarians and those with personal vendettas to enact. Colbeck and Leeming face further obstacles when the Railway announces a reward of GBP400 for information - soon they are pitched against criminals, the public and their own colleagues in their attempts to solve the case. Meanwhile, with the investigation stalling, the newly married Madeleine Colbeck and her father race to reach Inspector Colbeck with important information. Will they be in time to save the royal family before their train journey to Balmoral?

1863. Superintendent Henry Jarrett, Chief Detective of Glasgow Central, is comfortably ensconced in Elsie Maitland's superior guest house for single gentlemen. Unfortunately, this tranquillity is short-lived when a major bank robbery calls for the best efforts of Jarrett, Inspector Charlie Grant and Sergeant Tommy Quinn.

1861. Constable Faro is heading to Orkney, pursuing a private investigation into the mysterious drowning of an ex-colleague’s relative, champion swimmer Dave Claydon. Was this an accident or does Claydon’s death have a sinister connection with missing artefacts recovered from the Armada galleon sunk off Spanish Cove? Faro’s holiday soon turns into a nightmare as finds himself in deadly danger, his life threatened by circumstances beyond his control.

Summer, 1858. Young Imogen Burnhope and her maid Rhoda board a non-stop train to Oxford to visit Imogen's Aunt Cassandra, who waits on the platform at the terminus to greet them. All the passengers alight at Oxford, but the two women are nowhere to be seen. The train is searched and the coachman swears he saw them join first class, however they seem to have vanished into thin air. When he learns his daughter is missing, Sir Marcus Burnhope contacts Scotland Yard for help. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are assigned to the case and are advised to tread carefully around Sir Marcus - an MP who is used to getting what he wants. With witnesses confirming the impossible - that the women boarded the train - is it a simple case of runaways? Or is there a larger, more sinister conspiracy at work? The Railway Detective must unravel the mystifying web of their disappearance before Imogen and Rhoda vanish into oblivion for good.

1859. St Mary's Church, Spondon. A little girl playing hide-and-seek jumps into a freshly-dug grave to find a dead man already occupying it. It is the body of Cedric Norton, a senior director of the Midland Railway. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming travel to Derbyshire to investigate.

Book 12 in the Railway Detective series.

For two years, Scots-born John Muir lived in a small cabin along the Yosemite creek, observing the valley's natural beauty and reading Emerson under the stars. The experience forged a lifelong affinity with the site, which would result in its establishment as a national park in 1890. Originally written as a guidebook to the park, Muir describes every aspect of wildlife and landscape that one might encounter there.