The Girl on the Train Author Paula Hawkins Will Publish New Suspense Story in 2017

Paula Hawkins, the British author who wrote the best seller The Girl on the Train, will publish her next book on May 2 via Riverhead Books.

Called Into the Water, Hawkins’ next endeavor will tell a suspense story of murder in a riverside town, diving into family secrets and “the slipperiness of truth.” The description reads: “When a single mother and a teenage girl each turn up dead at the bottom of the river, just weeks apart, the ensuing investigation dredges up a complicated history.”

“This story has been brewing for a good while,” Hawkins said in a statement. “For me there is something irresistible about the stories we tell ourselves, the way voices and truths can be hidden consciously or unconsciously, memories can be washed away and whole histories submerged.”

Sarah McGrath, Hawkins’ editor in the U.S., said in a statement: “Just as The Girl on the Train explored voyeurism and self-perception, so does Into the Water interrogate the deceitfulness of memory and all the dangerous ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present and future.”

Into the Water will be Hawkins’ first novel since 2015’s The Girl on the Train, which rocked best-seller lists when it sold more than 18 million copies worldwide. The book was adapted into the Emily Blunt-fronted film, which bowed this year. Hawkins was not involved with the film, but when speaking to EW about its release, she called her next novel a story between two sisters with “a very messy history.”

In another interview last year, Hawkins spoke to EW about her next release, which would become Into the Water: “It’s a similar genre and it’s also going to be narrated by women but a very different book. I haven’t really talked about his much because it’s quite a difficult thing to explain. Because it sounds weird. It’s got quite a gothic feel to it. It’s not about witch-hunting, I can tell you this. However, I wanted there to be something about women being accused of witchcraft. That didn’t happen much in the south of England. Mostly that happened in Scotland and the north. That part of England really lends itself to a dark and gothic and brooding novel, so it worked out. I’m not at the point where I’ve got an elevator pitch, as you can tell! But I’m working on it and I think that it will be out next year.”

This article originally appeared on EW.com