Description

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Room and The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue takes readers on a thrilling ride through a simmering turn-of-the-century Paris on the edge of a dazzling future.

‘Ratchets up the pace until it’s hurtling along as fast as the train itself’ – Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam
‘A zippy Agatha Christie-like thriller giving a taste of life in fin-de-siecle France’ – The Guardian

A woman determined to make her mark. A journey that will change everything.

Paris, 1895. One morning, a young woman boards the Granville Express with a deadly plan.

On the journey lives intertwine in explosive ways. There are the railway crew who have everything to lose, a little boy travelling alone for the first time, an elderly statesman with his fragile wife and a lonely artist far from home.

The train speeds towards the City of Light and into a future that will change everything . . .

‘An edge-of-your-seat historical thriller that I couldn’t put down’ – Shelby Van Pelt, author of Remarkably Bright Creatures

Publisher Review

A zippy Agatha Christie-like thriller giving a taste of life in fin-de-siecle France * The Guardian * A pacy read of secrets and lies * The i Paper * The Paris Express is all about speed, and its heady corollary, escape. Good writing is also about momentum, and another corollary, the suspension of disbelief. This novel is a masterclass in both: an engrossing narrative, married to its intrinsic specificity, the joy of details * The Independent * A riveting mix of social commentary and mystery . . . has much in common with Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express . . . If the steam engine is an astonishing feat of engineering, so is Donoghue’s propulsive and thought-provoking 16th novel * The Washington Post * Donoghue deftly combines thriller and mystery elements with her trademark historical fiction . . . To say more about it would be to spoil the luxurious enjoyment of sinking into the multifaceted narrative that [she] creates * The Sunday Times (Ireland) * A nail-biter – and you’ll learn some history, too * People * Donoghue’s historical fiction holds a special place in my heart . . . [she] is not a timid custodian of the past but an excavator, digging beneath bromides to unearth the defiant truth — Naoise Dolan, The Irish Times Clever, ambitious, and richly researched. A slice of 1890s Paris that makes us see that our modern problems aren’t so modern after all! The Paris Express is a smartly structured novel that ratchets up the pace until it’s hurtling along as fast as the doomed train itself — Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam Captivating! Emma Donoghue writes in rich, luxuriant detail, yet the story moves at a exhilarating clip. An edge-of-your-seat historical thriller that I couldn’t put down — Shelby Van Pelt, author of Remarkably Bright Creatures Wonderful. In exploring a little-remembered event in history, she manages to hold a mirror up to a whole society. An absorbing, panoramic, meticulously researched, lovingly peopled gem — Esi Edugyan, author of Washington Black Donoghue’s talents are at such glorious heights in this novel — Heather O’Neill, author of The Capital of Dreams You’ll find plenty of intimacy but few displays of party manners among the passengers Donoghue introduces in The Paris Express . . . As the train speeds toward the capital, vignettes in the various carriages provide a tension-filled panorama of fin-de-siecle French society — Alida Becker, The New York Times