Books Set on Trains: 7 Novels Where the Journey Is the Story
From murder on the Orient Express to a surreal train that never stops, the best train novels share a sealed world, a cast of strangers and nowhere to get off.
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1. The Train Between Worlds On this site
by Simran Mehta
Surreal train fiction: you wake aboard an endless train with no name and a ticket marked Destination Unknown, and every door opens on a different reality.
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2. Murder on the Orient Express
by Agatha Christie
The locked-carriage mystery every train novel is in conversation with. Snowbound, first class, twelve suspects.
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3. Night on the Galactic Railroad
by Kenji Miyazawa
Two boys ride a train across the night sky. Dreamlike and melancholy, and the ancestor of every spirit train since.
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4. The Memory Fare On this site
by Simran Mehta
A grieving mother boards the 11:47, a train that has never existed, because her missing daughter's handwriting is on its luggage tag. Its fares are paid in memories.
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5. Strangers on a Train
by Patricia Highsmith
Two strangers, one conversation in a dining car, and a proposal that can't be taken back.
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6. The Girl on the Train
by Paula Hawkins
The commuter's-eye view: the same houses passing every day, until one morning something is wrong.
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7. Night Train to Lisbon
by Pascal Mercier
A teacher abandons his life mid-lesson and boards a train to chase a stranger's book. Philosophical and slow.