Paula Hawkins, "The Girl on the Train"

In her debut novel, Hawkins, former deputy personal finance editor for the Times of London, uses three different narrators to explore how little any of us really know of the lives of others. Her rich psychological thriller centers on Rachel, who, in brief glimpses from a daily commuter train, finds what looks to her like an ideal marriage. She herself is still reeling from a nasty divorce, drinking way too much, and in fact commutes to a job she only pretends still to have. Then the woman she’s envied goes missing, and Rachel is implicated in the disappearance by her ex-husband, who claims Rachel was drunk and out of control near where the woman was last seen—but Rachel remembers nothing.

Hawkins is in conversation with journalist, author, and Book Maven Bethanne Patrick.

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