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Published in the year 2000, The Penguin Book Of Indian Railway Stories is a collection of the best short stories that are based on the railway stations in the Indian subcontinent. Summary Of The Book Through the ages, writers have been fascinated with the railway stations in India, and some of them include Jules Verne of the 1870s, and more recently R. K. Laxman and Satyajit Ray. The stories present in this edition are based on the Indian Railways, from the days of the British Raj to the present-day stations that overflow with people. The Penguin Book Of Indian Railway Stories begins with a poem Bond has included, called A Traveller’s Tale, written by A. G. Shirreff. Bond also pens down a few lines in the introduction to set the stage for the short stories, which are geared towards keeping the readers glued. Some of the stories included in this book are The Woman on Platform 8, Mano Majra Station, The Cherry Choo-Choo, Balbir Arora Goes Metric, Barin Bhowmik’s Ailment, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Luck of John Fernandez, The Bold Prentice, By Cow-Catcher and Trolley, and The Man Who Would be King. These stories are highly amusing, and some of them even have a bit of suspense. In The Cherry Choo-Choo, the readers are acquainted with a now defunct train known as Cherry Choo-Choo, which was once a train that people loved. This book comprises short stories from a number of authors such as Manojit Mitra, R. K. Laxman, Ruskin Bond, Manoj Das, Satyajit Ray, Bill Aitken, Jules Verne, Flora Annie Steel, Rudyard Kipling, Khushwant Singh, Jim Corbett, and J. W. Best. The Penguin Book of Indian Railway Stories has been divided into two parts. The first part contains stories written before independence, while the second part contains the same post-independence. About Ruskin Bond Ruskin Bond is a well-known author. Apart from this book, Bond has written Tales And Legends From India, A Face In The Dark And Other Hauntings, Rain In The Mountains-Notes From The Himalayas, and Hip Hop Nature Boy And Other Poems. Bond was born on the 19th of May, 1934, in Kasauli, Solan, Himachal Pradesh. He finished his studies from Bishop Cotton School, Shimla. During his time at school, Bond participated in a number of writing competitions and was presented with the Hailey Literature Prize, and the Irwin Divinity Prize. The Indian Council for Child Education presented Bond with the Sahitya Akademi Award for his major contribution to the growth of children’s literature. He has also been awarded the Padma Shri in the year 1999. He presently lives in Landour, near Mussoorie.