Paula Hawkins' 'masterful' new thriller about a mysterious sculpture due in 2024 from Transworld

Paula Hawkins’ next novel, The Blue Hour, will be published by Doubleday in October 2024 backed by a major publicity campaign, with many other major international deals under way. The Scottish-based thriller follows the discovery that a famous sculpture contains human remains. 

Sarah Adams, brand and fiction publisher, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Lizzy Kremer, m.d. at David Higham Associates. It will be published in the UK across hardcover, e-book and audio, accompanied by a major marketing and publicity campaign. 

The Blue Hour has also been signed in the US (Mariner), Canada (Doubleday) France (Sonatine), Spain (Planeta), Germany (dtv), Catalan (Columna), Portugal (PRH), Norway (Cappelen Damm) and Finland (Otava), and rights are under offer in The Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia with more auctions to take place between now and London Book Fair next month. 

The blurb reads: “When a small bone at the centre of a famous sculpture is revealed to be human, three people become intimately connected by the secrets and lies that put it there.” 

Set on a Scottish tidal island connected to the mainland for just a few hours each day, and home to only one inhabitant, The Blue Hour asks questions of ambition, power, art and perception.  

Transworld said: “A masterful novel that recalls the very best of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, yet remains quintessentially Paula Hawkins, Paula’s singular fourth thriller cements her place among the very best of our most nuanced, powerful and stylish storytellers.” 

Adams said: “From the moment I began reading The Blue Hour to the moment I arrived breathless at its end, I was entirely in its thrall. Paula’s tidal island setting is gorgeously vivid and her writing taut, tense and twisty as she teases and surprises us with economic precision.  

“In the tradition of the very best psychological writing I found myself unexpectedly questioning and self-aware, and these moments of pause in the novel are moments to relish. But of course it is Paula’s intimately presented characters who bring each scene so sharply to life — with all their passions and flaws and dangerous mistakes — and I could not be more excited to introduce them to readers this year.” 

Hawkins said: “I loved writing The Blue Hour and I couldn’t be happier that it will be published by Transworld, with whom I’ve had such a happy and successful publishing experience. This is a novel I’d been longing to write, full of ideas I wanted to explore about friendship and obsession, art and legacy, loneliness and yearning.”

Kremer said: ‘I loved sharing The Blue Hour with friends at Transworld and Paula’s international publishers, feeling earth tremors as they read, because the shocking events of this novel are revealed with a surprising and casual brutality born of the book’s intimacy in its opening sections.  

“This is an economical and slyly brilliant piece of fiction — the perfect demonstration of what Paula does best. Sharp as a knife, intriguing as clockwork. I know Transworld will do a fantastic job of making The Blue Hour irresistible and unmissable for Paula’s fans and new readers alike.” 

Hawkins’ 2015 thriller, The Girl on the Train (Transworld) has sold across 51 languages and was a number one global bestseller. Transworld also published Into the Water (2017) and A Slow Fire Burning (2021) which were also global bestsellers. She has sold 3.3 million units for a little over £21m altogether according to Nielsen BookScan.

Hawkins worked as a journalist for 15 years before turning her hand to fiction. Raised in Zimbabwe, she moved to London in 1989. She now splits her time between London and Edinburgh.