Emma Donoghue, whose bestselling novel Room shook the world when it came out in 2010, another novel is in the works. Grab your tickets: let’s go to Paris.
Paris Expressdue out March 18, 2025 from Summit Books, is based on the 1895 disaster at Paris’s Montparnasse train station. Set on a train full of characters hailing from Brittany, Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania and Cambodia, it’s historical fiction driven by the power of motion — and the designs of those who board it.
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Members of Parliament rush back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects that the girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two train crew members forge a secret life that doesn’t include their wives; a young anarchist has a nefarious plan are just some of the scenes that readers can expect, says the publisher’s synopsis.
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Read an exclusive early excerpt below that sets the scene for the world Paris Express.
‘Paris Express’ by Emma Donoghue.
Summit Books
8:30 in the morning
BOARDING THE GRANVILLE
“There isn’t a train I won’t take, no matter where it goes. Edna St. Vincent Millay, “The Journey” (1921)
Half past eight in the morning, October 22, 1895, in Granville, on the coast of Normandy. A stocky, plain, 21-year-old, in a collar, tie and wide skirt, Mado Pelletier stands across from a small train station holding her metal lunch pail with a lid, watching.
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The descending train, as they call any service from the capital, left Mad here yesterday evening, sooty and with broken bones. Only now does it occur to her that she could have waited until this morning to leave Paris, disembark early at Dreux, Surdon or Flers, buy what she needed and catch the next express way back. All that really matters is that he be on the fast train to Paris by lunchtime on the 22nd.
He assumes she made it all the way to Granville because that’s the end of the line. Western Society posters call this windy city the Monaco of the North. In the hours Mado has been here, she hasn’t sought out the lighthouse or the casino or any of the so-called landmarks of this off-season resort. Except for one – she longed to set her eyes on the sea once in her life.
Adapted from THE PARIS EXPRESS by Emma Donoghue, Copyright © 2025 Emma Donoghue and Summit Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this extract may be reproduced or reprinted without the written permission of the publisher.
Paris Express Emme Donoghue is out on March 18, 2025 and is available for pre-order now, wherever books are sold.
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Source: HIS Education