BestsellingRoomAuthor Emma Donoghue Returns WithThe Paris Express— See the Cover! (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Emma Donoghue and her new book ‘The Paris Express’.Photo:Woodgate Photography; Summit Books

Woodgate Photography; Summit Books

Emma Donoghue, whose bestseller novelRoomrocked the world when it came out in 2010, has another novel on the way. Grab your tickets: we’re headed to Paris.

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Members of parliament are hurrying back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary is trying to convince her boss of moving pictures' potential; two of the train’s crew are forging a secret life that doesn’t involve their wives; a young anarchist has a dastardly plan are just a few of the scenes readers can expect, according to the publisher’s synopsis.

Below, read an exclusive early excerpt that sets the scene aboardThe Paris Express.

Summit Books

8:30 a.m.

EMBARK GRANVILLE

“There isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, no matter where it’s going. Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Travel” (1921)

Half past eight in the morning, on the 22nd of October, 1895, in Granville, on the Normandy coast. Stocky, plain, and 21, in her collar, tie and boxy skirt, Mado Pelletier stands across the street from the little railway station holding her lidded metal lunch bucket, watching.

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She supposes she came all the way to Granville because it’s the end of the line. The Company of the West’s posters call this wind-raked town the Monaco of the North. In the hours Mado’s been here, she hasn’t sought out the lighthouse or the casino or any of the so-called sights of this resort, off-season. Except one — she had a hankering to, for once in her life, set eyes on the sea.

source: people.com