During the tumultuous year of 2008--when gas prices reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership records, and a commuter train collided with a freight train in California--journalist James McCommons spent a year on America's trains, talking to the people who ride and work the rails throughout much of the Amtrak system. Organized around these rail journeys, Waiting on a Train is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism. Readers meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible? Distrust of railroads in the nineteenth century, overregulation in the twentieth, and heavy government subsidies for airports and roads have left the country with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail system. Amtrak has endured for decades, and yet failed to prosper owing to a lack of political and financial support and an uneasy relationship with the big, remaining railroads. While riding the rails, McCommons explores how the country may move passenger rail forward in America--and what role government should play in creating and funding mass-transportation systems. Against the backdrop of the nation's stimulus program, he explores what it will take to build high-speed trains and transportation networks, and when the promise of rail will be realized in America.

The celebrated writer reminisces about his boyhood in Michigan at the turn of the century.

Bobby Berlin's father wakes up convinced it's 1979 and he's a teenage fugitive called Dodd Pollen. Fleeing with his reluctant son in tow they find the countryside inexplicably deserted. And Bobby realizes how dangerous Dodd Pollen is. Short-listed for the Royal Mail Award, Angus Book Award, Manchester Book Award and Bolton Book Award.

This ingeniously useful compendium--organized to suit whatever time that the reader has available at that moment--offers reading material to fill those gray, in-between moments in life with beauty, wonder, insight, and emotion.

Grief is a long road without end, and time is not the healer, but what you do with that time that heals. The choices you make in your journey meet with many challenges, but there is always an open door for better days. You may take two steps forward and six steps back, but it is those two steps that will make the difference. Holding to the rope railings of a swinging bridge as you move forward, is a shaky endeavor, but not one that cant be accomplished if you keep moving. This is what Lynn realized when coming to terms with her emotions. It was like sittin at a bus stop, waitin on a train.

World War II, perhaps the defining event of the 20th century, didn't happen only on the battlefield. WAITIN' FOR THE TRAIN TO COME IN is an historical novel about a New England family on the home front during the tumultuous years that changed the world--and the lives of all Americans. The novel follows the Stewarts of Springfield, Massachusetts as they cope with the sacrifices, adventures, and drama of "the war to end all wars." Live the years 1943-1946 through the eyes of Laura and Alan Stewart, their son Billy, and his Aunt Belle as each experiences life in an urban neighborhood and, for one, on a Navy ship in the Pacific. Through the eyes of Laura, Billy, Belle, Alan and many other characters, WAITIN' FOR THE TRAIN TO COME IN also explores larger outcomes of the war: the changing role of women; adjustments of returning veterans; life in wartime factories; and the struggles of being a child and adolescent during these turbulent years. Re-live air raid drills; rationing; holiday and end-of-war celebrations. Experience life in the Navy, from basic training to kamikaze attacks, typhoons, and the pleasures of wartime Honolulu. David Garnes' extensive research also adds to the vivid re-creation of popular culture of the Forties: on the radio, in the movies, and in newspapers and popular books and magazines. WAITIN' FOR THE TRAIN TO COME IN will appeal to readers who lived through this period, as well as those who did not experience the war but enjoy a well-plotted novel set against the backdrop of a crucial and exciting time in our history.

Ashley meets her great-uncle by the old train tracks near their community in Nova Scotia. Ashley sees his sadness, and Uncle tells her of the day years ago when he and the other children from their community were told to board the train before being taken to residential school where their lives were changed forever. They weren't allowed to speak Mi'gmaq and were punished if they did. There was no one to give them love and hugs and comfort. Uncle also tells Ashley how happy she and her sister make him. They are what give him hope. Ashley promises to wait with her uncle by the train tracks, in remembrance of what was lost.

Light the candles and shut the door, The Wrong Train is a deliciously creepy and scarily good collection of scary stories, complete with terrifying illustrations from Dave Shelton. Perfect for fans of Patrick Ness, R.L. Stine, and Emily Carroll.Imagine you've just managed to catch your train and you realize it's the wrong one. You'd be annoyed of course, but not scared . . . Yet.Imagine you get off the wrong train at the next station hoping to catch one back the way you came. But the station is empty. Again, you'd be annoyed, but not scared . . . Yet.Imagine someone comes to the station, a stranger who starts to tell you stories to help pass the time. But these aren't any old stories--they're nightmares that come with a price to pay. And you want them to stop. Scared yet? You will be.