A very short, almost terse, “bottle episode” of a novel, Emma Donoghue’s latest book imagines the hours leading up to one of the most famous train disasters in early rail history (famous because of the photograph of it, not because of a huge death toll or anything). Peopling her train cars with a mix of real historical figures who are known to have been on that train, real historical figures who weren’t but plausibly might have been, and a few wholly fictional characters, Donoghue brings this tiny slice of space and time to life with her trademark vivid style.