Have you ever wanted to travel back in time and fix your mistakes? Or maybe you'd like to see the world during the swinging 1920s or visit Ancient China? Time travel isn't possible in the real world - yet, but in a novel it is! Here are some great time travel novels to help you get your time travel fix.
1) Oxford Time Travel Series by Connie Willis (1992-2010)
Follow the time travel exploits and mishaps of different Oxford historians as the travel back and forth through time to learn about and save history. In the first book, Doomsday Book, historian, Kivrin Engle makes a trip to the Middle Ages, but accidentally shows up in the middle of the Black Death epidemic in the 14th century.
2) Kindred by Octavia Butler (2004)
Credited as the first science fiction novel to be written by a black woman, Kindred is considered a cornerstone of black american literature. Twenty-six year old Dana lives in California in 1976 when she is inadvertently wrenched into antebellum Maryland. Dana is jerked back and forth between the present and the past in order to save the life of a young man who plays an important role in her family's history.
3) Version Control by Dexter Palmer (2016)
Overcome by a general feeling of wrongness, Rebecca Wright struggles to explain her uneasiness with her husband, physicist, Philip Steiner. Philip has been working on a machine similar to a time machine, but not the same - it warps the space-time continuum in unexpected ways, and may be the cause of Rebecca's growing unease.
4) The Chronicles of St. Mary's by Jodi Taylor (2015-2018)
Members of the St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research travel through time to "thwart time-traveling terrorists and investigate major historical events." (NoveList) The first book in the series is titled "Just One Damned Thing After Another" - it follows Madeleine Maxwell as she becomes a member of the St. Mary's Institute and engages in an epic time travel adventure to save the Institute she loves.
5) Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon (1991-2017)
When Claire Randall steps through a circle of standing stones she is swiftly transported to 18th century Scotland. Claire finds love and hardship during the Jacobite uprising of 1745, and throughout the novels she travels back and forth between the present (1940s) and the past. The books were also made into a popular television series in 2014. (This post was written by Marina Rose, Adult Services.)
Want more book recommendations? Send an e-mail to infolibrary@cityofcaldwell.org and tell us what we should write about next!