The Girl on the Train

From her seat on the commuter train she takes every morning and evening, Rachel watches the same couple at breakfast on their deck, in a row of suburban homes where the train halts at a signal. She has named them Jess and Jason and imagines their life as perfect, much like the one she recently lost. Then, in the minute before the train moves on, she sees something shocking. Rachel herself drinks heavily, and her own marriage has ended. Paula Hawkins's 2015 thriller held the top spot on the New York Times fiction list for 13 weeks running.

Barack Obama included it on his 2016 summer vacation reading list.