Doughty's train station mystery published by Faber

Faber will publish Louise Doughty’s “gripping, eerily-timely” new novel about two deaths at a train station, Platform Seven, in August.

The Apple Tree Yard author’s next book explores Platform Seven at 4am in a deserted Peterborough Railway Station as protagonist Lisa Evans considers two fatalities at the same platform in 18 months to be connected.

Described by Faber as "gripping, brilliant, original and eerily-timely” the novel follows a man crossing the covered walkway on a “ reezing" November morning, "confident he’s alone". As he sits on the metal bench at the far end of the platform it is clear his choice is strategic, the synopsis reads, and he is as far away from the night staff as he can get.

"What the man doesn’t realise is that he has company. Lisa Evans knows what he has decided,” Faber said. "She knows what he is about to do as she tries and fails to stop him walking to the platform edge…No one is more desperate to understand what connects them than Lisa Evans herself. After all, she was the first of the two to die."

Louisa Joyner, editorial director at Faber, bought world all languages rights from Antony Harwood at Antony Harwood Limited.Platform Seven will be published on 22nd August 2019.

Joyner said: "I remember finishing Apple Tree Yard by a pool in Greece and thinking 'How did Louise Doughty create a novel that is both utterly gripping with a protagonist so perfectly-realised, Dr Yvonne Charmicheal feels like a friend of a friend'. In Platform Seven she takes that wisdom and heart and blends it with a story readers will be glued to, and talking about, in their thousands. Lisa Evans’s story is as resonant as it is unputdownable."

Platform Seven is London-based Doughty's ninth novel.  Her most recent book was Black Water (Faber), which was published in 2016.

Her bestseller Apple Tree Yard (Faber) sold over half a million copies in the UK alone following publication in 2013, Faber said, and was adapted for BBC One as a four-part series starring Emily Watson. She has been nominated for the Orange Prize for fiction and the Costa Novel award and her work has been translated into 30 languages.