Bestselling “Room” Author Emma Donoghue Returns With “The Paris Express” — See the Cover! (Exclusive)

Her new historical fiction takes place aboard a train packed full of a colorful cast. Read a sneak peek here.

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

The Paris Express, due out March 18, 2025 from Summit Books, is based on an 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station. Set on a train packed with characters who hail from Brittany, Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania and Cambodia, it's a historical fiction driven by the power of locomotion — and the designs of those on board.

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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.

Related: Brie Larson Says It Took a Year to 'Get Out of' the 'Dark' Headspace After Room: 'It Was Really Scary'

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

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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The down train, as they call any service from the capital, deposited Mado here yesterday evening, sooty and bone-jarred. Only now does it occur to her that she could have waited until this morning to leave Paris, disembarked early at Dreux, Surdon or Flers, bought what she needed and caught the next express back. All that really matters is that she be on a fast train to Paris by lunchtime on the 22nd.

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.

Adapted from THE PARIS EXPRESS by Emma Donoghue, Copyright © 2025 by Emma Donoghue and Summit Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue comes out March 18, 2025 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

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