It's November and Maggy Thorsen, co-owner of the Wisconsin gourmet coffeehouse, Uncommon Grounds, is in South Florida at an annual crime-writers' conference with her beau, local sheriff Jake Pavlik, who is due to speak as a 'forensics expert'. Maggy's pledge to behave solely as a tourist becomes trickier than she anticipated when the conference's opening night event turns out to be a re-enactment of Agatha Christie's classic, Murder on the Orient...

It's December 19, 1931. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are looking forward to a much-needed, restful Christmas holiday, when they are called upon to investigate the murder of a man in a Norfolk hospital ward. Cynthia Catchpool, Edward's mother, insists that Poirot stay with her in a crumbling mansion by the coast, so that they can all be together for the festive period while he solves the case. As Poirot digs into the mystery, he discovers...

"Longmire Sheriff Walt Longmire is enjoying a celebratory beer after a weapons certification at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy when a younger sheriff confronts him with a photograph of twenty-five armed men standing in front of a Challenger steam locomotive. It takes him back to when, fresh from the battlefields of Vietnam, then-deputy Walt accompanied his mentor Lucian to the annual Wyoming Sheriff's Association junket held on the excursion...

"In 1998, Dominique Mielle joined Canyon Partners, then a small, little-known hedge fund. The job was trading distressed securities and high yield bonds, known back then, respectively, as vulture investing and junk bonds. Over the span of two decades, she rose to the top of the firm as the only female partner and senior portfolio manager--in what became one of the largest hedge funds in the U.S. Damsel in distressed explores the inner workings of...

"In 1923 Shanghai, native and foreign travelers alike are enthralled by the establishment of a new railway line to distant Peking. With this new line comes the Peking Express, a luxurious express train on the cutting edge of China's continental transportation. Among those drawn to the train are oil heiress Lucy Aldrich, journalist John Benjamin Powell, and vacationing Army Majors Roland Pinger and Scott Allen, wives and children in tow. These errant...

"Middle-aged Englishman and B&B owner Richard Ainsworth is living a quiet life in the Val de Follet--and that's the way he likes it. His quiet routine is suddenly disrrupted when scandal erupts in the nearby town of Saint-Sauver by way of its famous restaurant being downgraded from three 'Michelin' stars to two. The restaurant is shamed, the town is in shock and the leading goat's cheese supplier drowns himself in one of his own pasteurisation tanks....