“I was hoping for some level of success, but what actually happened was off the scale,” said Paula Hawkins, author of the international bestseller The Girl on the Train. “It was extraordinary.”

Hoping for equivalent success with her second mystery novel, Into the Water, Hawkins is heading out on tour to promote it, including a stop at Nicola’s Books on May 17. (AADL and Nicola's will co-host a The Girl on the Train discussion on May 8 at 7 pm at the library's Westgate branch.)

Into the Water has been a long time coming for Hawkins. “I actually started it before The Girl on the Train was published,” she said. “But then I had to suddenly start touring and my writing process became a little bit interrupted. So it’s really been something that I had to carve out time and space for because it’s a complex novel with lots of characters and there are a number of different mysteries going on.”

If you loved the psychological thrills of The Girl on the Train, Into the Water won’t disappoint. Set in a small, rural town in northern England (“very beautiful, very bleak,” said Hawkins), the story is told from multiple characters’ points of view. It’s the type of community where everyone knows everyone else’s business -- which prompts some individuals to keep secrets.

“It’s up to the reader to move through this town and discover (the characters’) backstories and why they’re sort of keeping quiet about certain things," said Hawkins. "You find that people sort of aren’t telling the truth, but not perhaps for the reasons that we thought they weren’t telling the truth."

Like with The Girl on the Train, Hawkins uses the folly of memory to wildly exciting ends in Into the Water. A series of mysterious drownings, all in the same location in the river that winds through town, have left Beckford on edge and its citizens grief-stricken and unsettled. The past -- and how people remember it -- has an odd effect on how individuals react.

“I think that everyone will relate to that feeling where you misremember things from childhood where you’re convinced that something happened in a certain way and then you’ll talk to people in your family and they’ll go, ‘No, it didn’t,’” said Hawkins. “Everyone’s had that experience where they suddenly realize that something that they were completely convinced had happened hadn’t actually played out the way that they thought.”

It’s Hawkins' unique exploration of the mind and its failings that will keep readers turning the pages of Into the Water just as quickly as they tore through The Girl on the Train. But all that speed reading leaves fans clamoring for more, and while Hawkins hasn't started writing her next novel, she’s been turning over an idea in her mind for a while and feels ready to write the book after the whirlwind of the next few months winds down.

And though she's anxious to get back to writing and a book tour can be daunting, Hawkins is looking forward to setting out: “People who come to book fairs tend to be really warm, generous audiences, I have to say. It’s great to meet readers.”

Elizabeth Pearce is a Library Technician at the Ann Arbor District Library.

Paula Hawkins will read and sign her new book, "Into the Water," converse with author Nick Petrie, and answer questions at Nicola’s Books, 2513 Jackson Ave., Ann Arbor, in the Westgate Shopping Center at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, May 17. This event is free. In preparation for Hawkins’ visit, those who read "The Girl on the Train" are encouraged to come to a discussion about it on Monday, May 8, at 7 pm at the Westgate branch of the Ann Arbor District Library.