A Reader’s Guide to The Midnight Train: Every Book Mentioned

Books mentioned in The Midnight Train by Matt Haig to add to your TBR.

There’s something irresistible about the idea of going back—of stepping into the moments that shaped you and seeing them with fresh eyes. That’s the quiet magic behind The Midnight Train by Matt Haig, where a mysterious journey offers the chance to revisit the past and confront the choices that still linger.

As Wilbur retraces the most meaningful chapters of his life—love, loss, and everything in between—books begin to surface along the way, each one adding texture to his story and hinting at the person he was, and the one he might have been.

This post gathers every book mentioned throughout The Midnight Train, offering a closer look at the literary threads woven into its time-travelling, deeply reflective world.

• The Time Machine by HG Wells

• The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

• The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

• The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

• Moby Dick by Herman Melville

• The Call of the Wild by Jack London

• Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

• Franz Kafka’s short stories

• The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy-Casares

• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

• How green was my valley by Richard Llewellyn

• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

• The Spy who came in from the Cold by John le Carre

• Around the world in 80 days by Jules Verne

• An American in Paris by Siobhan Curham

• The Birds by Daphne du Maurier

• Macbeth by William Shakespeare

• The Owl and the Pussycat (poem) by Edward Lear

• The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

• One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

• A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

• Wild Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

• The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky

• The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

• Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

• The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

• The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

• The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

• The Colour Purple by Alice Walker

The Midnight Train by Matt Haig is out now.

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The Midnight Train

by Matt Haig

When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop?

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