This novel, when originally published in 1936, was entitled 'The Wheel Spins'. However, since the Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation in 1938, the novel has become better known by its Hollywood title 'The Lady Vanishes'. The novel tells of a beautiful English tourist travelling by train in Europe who discovers that her elderly travelling companion seems to have disappeared from the train. After her fellow passengers deny ever having seen the elderly lady, the young woman is helped by a young musicologist, and the two proceed to search the train for clues to the old woman's disappearance. AUTHOR: Ethel Lina White, born in 1876, was a British crime writer, best known for her novel, The Wheel Spins (1936), on which Alfred Hitchcock based his motion picture, 'The Lady Vanishes' (1938).