Riverhead Books has acquired U.S. rights to Into the Water, the next novel from Paula Hawkins, whose The Girl on the Train has sold more than 6 million copies in the U.S. since it was published by Riverhead almost two years ago. Riverhead plans to release Into the Water on May 2, 2017.
According to Riverhead, in her new novel Hawkins “unfurls a gripping, twisting, layered story, set in a small riverside town. 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. Like The Girl on the Train, Hawkins’s new novel Into the Water hinges on a powerful understanding of human instincts and the damage they can inflict. “
In a statement, Hawkins's editor Sarah McGrath observed that in Into the Water Hawkins “pulls the reader along with so much intrigue, but as with her last thriller, the murder mystery is just one piece of the larger whole, just one element of what readers will connect with. 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.”
Despite being published in hardcover in January 2015, two editions of The Girl on the Train are still on this week's PW paperback bestsellers list; the original trade paperback is #1, while the tie-in edition to the movie is #4.
