Lessons in Chemistry was one of those novels that accumulated readers over time rather than arriving already famous. It became a word-of-mouth phenomenon, then an Apple TV+ series with Brie Larson, and Bonnie Garmus turned into one of the more closely watched debut authors of recent years. The pressure on her second novel is considerable. The follow-up is centered on a young man hired by Peck & Peck, described as the most prestigious, secretive, and dysfunctional poetry journal in New York.

The Midnight Library sold millions of copies and became the kind of book that appeared in airport bookshops and recovery centers simultaneously. It reached a readership that does not usually track literary fiction releases. Matt Haig’s follow-up to that novel, The Midnight Train, publishing May 26, is described as a sibling work to that book — not a sequel, but set in the same metaphysical territory. The premise trades the infinite library of alternate lives for something more linear: a single train journey between the life someone is living and the life they abandoned, with stops at each significant decision point along the way.