The Time Machine H.G.Wells It feels only right to begin a time travel book list with this granddaddy of time travel novels, published in 1895 – the book that was ahead of its time and was subsequently used as inspiration for many that followed. The Time Traveller (he is never named) recounts his astonishing story of the machine he has built and his journey to the future to a roomful of curious listeners over dinner. The book’s narrator is one of those people present. The Traveller has journeyed to the year 802,701 where he discovers that the human race has separated into two: the childlike Eloi and the scary, subterranean Morlocks. When his Time Machine mysteriously disappears, he is forced to spend several days with these creatures and so speculates as to what has happened to the human race. His theory is this: the Eloi are the wealthy members of society who achieved an Eden which has made them childlike. The Eloi are gentle and fragile, feed the Traveller fruit and cover him in flowers. They live as a commune, appear to be neither male nor female and dress alike. Generations of comfort and a lack of innovation and danger has softened them into intellectual and physical helplessness.The subterranean Morlocks, however, have evolved from the working classes. Their years of toil and labour have made them cunning and wily and the Eloi are now deathly afraid of them. I know this is a much loved classic for many but, to be honest, I found the writing to be rather dry and dull, which didn’t make for a particularly enjoyable read. And yet — the philosophizing is fascinating, especially given the time it was written. Worth reading for this alone.
The Kingdoms Natasha Pulley In an alternate 19th century reality in which the French have won the Napoleonic wars and colonized England, Joe Tournier steps off of a train in Londre with no memory of where he’s going or where he’s come from. After a kindly gentleman takes him to hospital he discovers that he suffers from a common type of epilepsy of the time which results in memory loss and occasional hallucinations. He also discovers that in this new world he is a slave with a wife he doesn’t love and an infant daughter Lily, whom he does. But Joe is unsettled by inexplicable memories that feel very real and the sense that things are not as they should be. When he receives a 90 year old postcard that depicts a lighthouse that has only just been built and the words “Dearest Joe, come back home if you remember me, M” he travels to the lighthouse in hopes of finding answers, only to find more questions — and a time portal which takes him to the year 1797. And so begins the complex story of Joe, as well as Missouri and Agatha, who are desperately hoping that information and technology from the future can change the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars. This book is a glorious tangle of timelines, events and characters in which past affects future and future affects past, with a protagonist at its centre who never quite knows who he is. It’s an imaginative, brilliantly written, and wonderfully complicated adventure story with a beautifully satisfying ending.
The Jane Austen Project Kathleen A. Flynn While modern books invoking Jane Austen often feel gimmicky, there’s no denying that this one has an intriguing premise. Set in a bleak future where Earth’s atmosphere has collapsed and natural sunlight no longer exists, the novel imagines a society that has nevertheless mastered time travel — and retained a deep reverence for Jane Austen. Two specialists, Dr. Rachel Katzman and actor Liam Finucane, are sent back to 1815 on a mission to recover a lost Austen manuscript before it disappears from history forever. Before departure, the pair undergo exhaustive preparation designed to help them blend into Regency England, learning everything from period etiquette to speech patterns and social customs. Even so, nothing quite prepares them for the realities of nineteenth-century life: the physical discomforts, rigid social rules, endless layers of clothing, and constant danger of making some tiny cultural misstep. Much of the novel’s charm comes from watching these well-prepared modern people struggle through the peculiarities and inconveniences of the Regency world. As Rachel and Liam become increasingly entangled in the lives of Jane and her brother Henry Austen, their mission grows far more complicated. The closer they get to their subjects, the harder it becomes to remain detached and they begin to wrestle with that classic time-travel dilemma: wanting to lend a helping hand, yet needing to leave history intact, knowing that every intervention risks altering the future in unknown ways. It’s a difficult balancing act for a time-travel novel and the author handles it with enough restraint to avoid major eye-rolling. The Regency detail also feels convincing and carefully researched, grounding the speculative elements in a world that feels authentic and lived-in. The book occasionally loses momentum, and personally I found the romance subplot more distracting than compelling, but those are relatively minor complaints in what is otherwise a clever, thoughtful, and entertaining read — part literary homage, part sci-fi adventure, part affectionate exploration of why Austen’s world continues to captivate readers two centuries later.
The House On The Strand Daphne du Maurier Eccentric biophysicist Magnus Lane invites his friend Dick Young to stay at his house in Cornwall before Dick’s wife and stepsons arrive for the summer. Once there, Magnus persuades him to try an experimental drug that allows the user to mentally travel back to fourteenth-century Cornwall while their body remains in the present. Dick can observe the past but not participate in it, though experiences bleed oddly into reality — if he walks through water in the past, he wakes in the present soaking wet, and when the drug wears off he appears disoriented and drunk. Given the novel’s 1960s setting, there’s a strong suggestion that Magnus’ potion resembles LSD and other mind-altering substances of the era. As Dick becomes increasingly obsessed with the medieval world — particularly the beautiful Lady Isolda — the line between past and present begins to blur, and as he tumbles into a psychological unravelling, there are damaging consequences for his real life. The book is a curious blend of sci-fi, psychological suspense and family drama with gothic undertones. And Daphne du Maurier’s evocative descriptions of the Cornish coast give the story a haunting sense of place and steep it in atmosphere. A sometimes compelling read which, unfortunately, also has a sprightly dose of tedium thrown in.
The 7-1/2 Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle Stuart Turton Wow. What a mindblowing topsy-turvy read this is. It’s a country house murder on steroids. Aiden Bishop is a guest at Blackheath House where that night there will be a ball at which Evelyn Hardcastle will die amidst an explosion of fireworks. Unless Aiden solves her murder, the day will repeat itself and as each new day begins Aiden will find himself in the body of another guest, each one with a distinct personality and quirky traits which he must work with or fight against, taking each new perspective he gains and piecing it all together to crack the case. Complex and intricately layered, twisting back and forth upon itself over and over again, it is an utter wonder as to how Turton managed to pull this off. Not time travel in its truest sense, but if you’re ever in the mood for something dazzlingly out of the ordinary, this is it.
The Winter Sea Susanna Kearsley Carrie McClellan is writing an historical novel about the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1708, when French forces planned to land on Scottish shores and help restore James Francis Edward Stuart to the throne. While researching in France, Carrie has struggled to make progress, so she changes her venue to Scotland, where she feels immediately drawn to Cruden Bay and the haunting ruins of Slains Castle. Suddenly the words flow and the story practically writes itself. But Carrie comes to realize that the novel she thinks she is writing is actually the true story of her ancestors, and the visions and dreams she keeps having are so vivid that past and present start to bleed together, especially when the eighteenth century narrative starts to mirror her own present one. History comes to life in this richly textured story set against a backdrop of windswept cliffs, grey seas and castle ruins, with the dramatic storyline of the past being seamlessly interwoven with the one in the present. There is romance threaded through both storylines, although, happily, it’s delicately balanced and doesn’t tip into sentimentality. The Winter Sea, with its lovely blend of history and romance and gentle supernatural intrigue, is cosy, intelligent and emotionally satisfying — the sort of book that invites you to curl up somewhere and lose yourself in its atmospheric charm.
What The Wind Knows Amy Harmon In 2010 USA, Anne Gallagher suffers the loss of her beloved grandfather. Heartbroken, she travels to Ireland to spread his ashes. She takes a boat out onto a lake, panics when she is consumed by fog, is subsequently shot and then finds herself in 1921. She is cared for by Dr. Thomas Smith, guardian to a young boy who looks eerily familiar to Anne, and then is herself mistaken for the young boy’s mother who disappeared years earlier. Suddenly Anne finds herself deep within the struggle for Irish Independence, caught up in dangerous conflict, mistrusted and grappling to hide her true identity from those who believe her to be a traitor. Harmon does an excellent job of relaying the key issues of Ireland at this time, seamlessly weaving historical figures like Michael Collins into her fictional narrative. The detail is rich and interesting, the writing quiet and lyrical and the past and present are drawn into a satisfying conclusion.
The Two Lives Of Lydia Bird Josie Silver Again, not strictly a time-travel novel, but it plays in the same emotional sandbox. On her twenty-eighth birthday, Lydia loses her fiancé Freddie in a devastating car accident. Crushed by grief and unable to sleep, she’s prescribed sleeping pills — only to discover that whenever she takes them, she slips into an alternate version of her life in which Freddie never died. The novel moves back and forth between these two realities: the “awake” world, where Lydia is trying to navigate loss and rebuild herself, and the “asleep” world, where Freddie is still alive and their life together continues as though the accident never happened. The two timelines run in parallel, subtly diverging in unexpected ways, and sometimes bleeding into each other in emotionally disorienting moments. There’s also the logistical nightmare that Lydia must sleep during the day in order to experience the alternate reality at the corresponding time — which means people keep interrupting her at exactly the wrong moments. Friends, family, work obligations: everyone insists on waking her up just when things are getting interesting or emotionally unbearable. It becomes both a source of frustration and, at times, dark humour. It’s a genuinely intriguing premise, exploring grief through the idea of living simultaneously with loss and denial. The author has a warm, accessible writing style that makes the book easy to sink into, and emotionally it taps into that universal longing to revisit the life that might have been. That said, for me the story never creates enough tension to fully sustain its concept and about two-thirds of the way through, I found myself setting it aside with no urgency to return.