The Blue Hour: A Novel

by Paula Hawkins

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Eerie, lush and dark — The Blue Hour is a psychological thriller about hidden truths and the dangers that come with uncovering them. This is Paula Hawkins at her finest.

The propulsive and powerful new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train

"The best Paula Hawkins yet — by a tense and haunting mile." — Lee Child

"The Blue Hour is an atmospheric, stylish puzzle box of a thriller with a deliciously inventive premise. I love a locked-room mystery—or, in this case, a locked-island mystery—and Paula Hawkins has delivered a truly exceptional one." — Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Long Bright River and The God of the Woods

Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.

Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.

Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.

But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.

And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge....

 A masterful novel that is as page-turning as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798874800642
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/08/2024
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Paula Hawkins worked as a journalist for fifteen years before turning her hand to fiction. Born and brought up in Zimbabwe, Paula moved to London in 1989. She now splits her time between London and Edinburgh.

Editorial Reviews

06/24/2024

This predictable offering from bestseller Hawkins (The Girl on the Train) centers on an enigmatic artist, her socially awkward companion, and a lifelong fan of her work. In the present, a Tate Modern retrospective of late painter Vanessa Chapman is cut short when a forensics expert notices that an apparent animal bone in one of her sculptures is actually a human rib bone. James Becker, an employee at the foundation that manages her estate, tries to settle the matter by heading to Eris Island, where Chapman lived for the last decade of her life, and interviewing her companion there, Grace Haswell. Hanging in the air is the 20-year-old disappearance of Vanessa’s husband, Julian, whose body was never found; rumors swirl in the press that the rib bone may have belonged to him. As James and Grace bond over their love for Vanessa, flashbacks illuminate Julian’s fate and the precise nature of Vanessa and Grace’s relationship. Hawkins manages few surprises and fewer insights into her characters, resulting in a narrative that’s curiously uninvolving even as her skills as a stylist are on full display. This fails to add up to more than the sum of its parts. Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Reminiscent of du Maurier: art, islands, missing spouses ... A compelling piece of work, hard to put down.”  — Mick Herron

"The best Paula Hawkins yet - by a tense and haunting mile." — Lee Child

"An atmospheric and marvelously twisty novel— Paula Hawkins returns with an examination of legacy, and the mountains we'll move to feel like we belong. THE BLUE HOUR builds a labyrinth of surprises, which deliver through to the very last page." — Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution

From the Publisher