Paula Hawkins Books in Order - Complete List

New York Times bestselling author Paula Hawkins is a British author known for her psychological thrillers, including the bestselling novel The Girl on the Train. This novel had a unique and irresistible concept that captured the emotions of millions of readers worldwide.

Currently, Paula Hawkins has five standalone thriller novels, with the latest book, The Blue Hour, published in October 2024.

Here are all the Paula Hawkins books in order for her novels. The book list is constantly updated with new releases, so check back regularly for updates.

Latest Paula Hawkins Books

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Standalone Novels in Publication Order

The Girl on the Train, 2015
Into the Water, 2017
A Slow Fire Burning, 2021
Blind Spot, 2022 (novella in the Quick Reads 2022 series)
The Blue Hour, 2024

Non-Fiction Books in Publication Order

Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Kids a Real Education With or Without School, 2001 (with Grace Llewellyn as Amy Silver)
The Money Goddess: The Complete Financial Makeover, 2006

Writing as Amy Silver – Romantic Comedy Novels

Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista, 2009
All I Want for Christmas, 2010
One Minute to Midnight, 2011
The Reunion, 2013

Paula Hawkins Books Overviews

The Girl on the Train (2015)

Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough.

Into the Water (2017)

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.

Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return.

A Slow Fire Burning (2021)

When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women who knew him. Laura is the troubled one-night-stand last seen in the victim’s home. Carla is his grief-stricken aunt, already mourning the recent death of yet another family member.

And Miriam is the nosy neighbor clearly keeping secrets from the police. Three women with separate connections to the victim. Three women who are – for different reasons – simmering with resentment.

Blind Spot (2022)

Since they were kids, Edie, Jake, and Ryan have been the closest of friends. It’s been the three of them against the world. Edie thought the bonds between them were unbreakable. So when Jake is brutally murdered and Ryan is accused of the crime, her world is shattered.

Edie is alone for the first time in years, living in the remote house that she and Jake shared. She is grief-stricken and afraid – with good reason. Because someone is watching. Someone has been waiting for this moment. Now that Edie is alone, the past she tried so hard to leave behind is about to catch up with her…

The Blue Hour, 2024

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….

Paula Hawkins Biography

Paula Hawkins was born on August 28, 1972, in Harare, Zimbabwe, which was then called Salisbury, Rhodesia. Her father, Anthony Hawkins was an economics professor and financial journalist. Paula attended Arundel School in Harare, Zimbabwe.

At the age of 17, she moved with her family to London, where she studied for her A-Levels at Collingham College in Kensington, West London. Next, she enrolled at Keble College, University of Oxford, where she studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE).

After graduating from college, she started working as a financial journalist for The Times in London. Also, as a freelancer, she wrote for publications and published two non-fiction books. After more than 15 years, in 2008, she was forced to change her career due to the recession.

Paula Hawkins was always interested in writing, however, early on, her stories were all unfinished and not published. Initially, she wrote two non-fiction books, one of which was under her alias, Amy Silver. However, she soon realized that writing dry non-fiction was not something she wanted to continue pursuing, so in her thirties, still writing as Amy Silver, she published four romantic comedy novels between 2009 and 2013.

Although these novels helped hone her writing skills, she changed her direction once again when she realized that her interests were not related to comedy at all.

And this is how The Girl on the Train, which was published in 2015, came about, As a psychological thriller, it captured the hearts of people around the world and became an instant bestseller. This time, Paula Hawkins knew her future direction in writing: darker, twisted, serious stories, an interest that was sparked by her love of true crime and the complexities of human behavior. The story deals with heavy topics such as domestic violence, alcohol, and drug abuse.

While writing the story, which took her half a year of full-time focusing on the novel completely, she ran out of money and had to ask her dad for help.

The novel was so intriguing, catching, and unique that it caught the eyes of movie director Tate Taylor and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson, and it was adapted the very next year, in 2016 into a same-titled film. Emily Blunt plays the main character, Rachel Watson, who is a very convincing recovering alcoholic who has lost her job and marriage.

The same year, in November 2016, Paula Hawkins was listed as one of BBC’s 100 Women. The year’s theme was Defiance for Womankind. This listing recognizes her impact and influence in the literary world.

Paula Hawkins currently lives in central London.

Why did The Girl on the Train Make Such a Big Splash After Publication?

The novel made a significant impact, not to mention it achieved almost instant success due to its interesting concept, the unreliable narrator, and the book title.

The novel’s concept is interesting. Rachel Watson, an alcoholic divorcee, imagines the lives of a perfect couple she watches during her daily commute. However, her illusions are shattered when she sees something shocking that pushes her to contact the police right away. But is what she saw real?
The book is different from the usual thrillers involving women who are either weak damsels in distress or tough as nails. Here, we see a very unreliable narrator, a trend in psychological thrillers made popular by Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

This is a narrative style that makes readers doubt the main character’s impression of what really happened. This adds an extra layer of suspense and anticipation to the story that fits the genre perfectly. The Girl on the Train helped make this theme even more popular.

In addition, the novel’s title, which includes words like “The Girl” or “The Woman”, created a real trend in the psychological thriller genre. Following this, several authors published similar novels, which made The Girl on the Train even more popular.

Thus, if you enjoyed The Girl on the Train, you might also like books like The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn, The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, The Girl with No Past by Kathryn Croft, and The Girl Before by JP Delaney. Even The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, a book written before Paula Hawkins’s novel, got renewed interest and attention from readers who searched for books similar to The Girl on the Train.

Following its bestseller success, The Girl on the Train has been so far translated into over 30 languages and sold in 34 countries.

Paula Hawkins Books Adaptations

The Girl on the Train

It was made into a popular 2016 movie with the same title starring Emily Blunt as Rachel Wilson. Other main characters are played by Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Allison Janney, Édgar Ramírez, and Lisa Kudrow.
It was also adapted into a film of the same title starring Parineeti Chopra. It started filming in 2019, but it was delayed due to Covid-19, so it finally aired in 2021.
It was adapted into a stage play by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel, and it first premiered in The Courtyard Theatre at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2018. The play was also presented by the Court Theater in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2022 and in 2024 at the Vertigo Theatre in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Paula Hawkins Awards and Nominations