The 3:17 Train

At 3:17, nothing happens at Saint-Roch. No train has stopped at that station for twenty-six years.

And yet journalist Clara Ferrier has just been sent a video with no sender: one minute and four seconds, an abandoned platform, a train pulling in without the slightest sound… on a track where a tree is growing. At the third window of the first coach, a young man in a khaki parka turns his head.

It is Bastien, her brother. He vanished ten years ago, on that same night, at that same time.

Clara does not believe in ghosts: she believes in checking. So that night she goes back to Saint-Roch with a torch and four hypotheses in her pocket. At 3:17, none of the four is any use. The doors open. A courteous voice announces: 'Saint-Roch. One minute's stop.'

Inside, the neighbourhood's missing are waiting for her, along with a conductor of unsettling politeness… and, in her own pocket, a ticket dated ten years ago.

Because this train does not carry bodies. It carries regrets. And to get off it, you have to say three words that can cost a whole lifetime.

The 3:17 Train is a short, hypnotic supernatural thriller: one night, one dead station, eleven chapters, and an ending that sends you straight back to the first page. A novel about disappearance, grief and guilt, in which the only monster is what we leave unsaid.

• Supernatural suspense and psychological mystery, with no gore.

• A one-night read: eleven chapters of mounting tension.

• With bonus material: the Saint-Roch file, ten questions for reading groups and a short railway glossary.

• Book 1 of The Forgotten Lines. Can be read as a standalone.

Step aboard. Look closely at the windows. And keep your ticket: you may be asked for it.