Is The Midnight Train a sequel to The Midnight Library?

No. The Midnight Train is a companion novel set in the same imaginative world as Matt Haig's The Midnight Library (2020), but it follows a different protagonist, Wilbur Budd, and uses a new device — a mysterious train rather than a library — to let him revisit his past. It does not continue Nora Seed's story.

What is The Midnight Train about?

Wilbur Budd is 81, a bookshop owner, and near the end of his life when a train that shouldn't exist arrives to carry him back through pivotal moments of his past — including his honeymoon in Venice with his late wife, Maggie. He cannot change what happened, but the journey forces him to look again at the choices he made and the person he became.

The Midnight Train

Literary Fiction Magical Realism

Pages: 297
Published: 2026
Language: English

Synopsis

Wilbur Budd is eighty-one years old, the owner of a bookshop, and close to the end of his life when a train arrives that shouldn't exist. No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there — the chance to relive the moments that meant the most, and to see what kind of person you really were.

For Wilbur, the best days were with Maggie, the love of his life, on their honeymoon in Venice, before he gave it all away. He wishes he could go back and live differently. To do so risks everything.

The Midnight Train is the second book in Matt Haig's Midnight World, a magical time-travelling love story set in the world of The Midnight Library rather than a direct sequel to it.

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