Overbooked Book Lists

Time Travel Fiction

Page Modified: June 19, 2009

Some favorites - Genres include: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Literary Fiction, Mystery.

• In the Garden of Iden: A Novel of the Company
  Author: Baker, Kage
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 23 ISBN: 0151002991 Date:
  Kirkus
  Poor Mendoza is not thrilled about being sent to Renaissance England, now ruled by bloody Mary Tudor. But orders are orders, and Mendoza is no longer a frightened little girl in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Didn't the Company give her powers and make her immortal? Her assignment is to save a species of holly from going extinct so that its anti-cancer value will not be lost to future generations.
  Also: Mendoza in Hollywood, The Graveyard Game, Black Projects, White Knights
• The Life of the World To Come
  Author: Baker, Kage
  Publisher: Tor $ 25.95 ISBN: 0765311321 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  In the newest novel of the Company series, a time-traveling botanist is stranded 150,000 years in the past. Grieving for the lover she lost twice, Mendoza meets a reincarnation of her love again.
  Updated 10.08.04
• Preternatural 3
  Author: Bonanno, Margert
  Publisher: Tor $ 24.95 ISBN:0312877609 Date: 2002
  Kirkus
  First, it was telepathic jellyfish. Then, it was a bit of time travel that altered history. Or did it? But now . . .
  We're way beyond jellyfish this time, baby.
  In the third Preternatural novel, our human friend Karen and the alien known as Govannon learn once again that time ain't what it's cracked up to be. - Publisher Marketing.
  Also: Preternatural and Preternatural 2
• Timeline
  Author: Crichton, Michael
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0679444815 Date: 1999
  PW
  Booklist Editors' Choice, Books for the Teen Age, ALA Best Books for Young Adults
  In an Arizona desert a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival-six hundred years ago. . . .
  
• The Watch
  Author: Danvers, Dennis
  Publisher: Eos $ 24.95 ISBN:0380977621 Date: 2002
  PW
  In 1921 Russia, a mysterious visitor from the far future appears at the deathbed of Peter Alexeivich Kropotkin, and offers him and extraordinary opportunity: the chance to be reborn. But as the former prince-turned-anarchist begins a new life in 1999 America, he finds his new home a difficult Eden.
  Suggested Reading: Alternative Fiction Stars
  
• Before the Cradle Falls
  Author: David, James F.
  Publisher: Forge $ 25.95 ISBN:0765303191 Date: 2002
  PW
  As a brutal serial child killer strikes in Portland, Oregon, a mysterious man, driven by the death of his own daughter, saves local children from danger, then vanishes. Detective Kyle Sommers learns the man has traveled from the future to save a generation of children--including his own.
  Suggested Reading: Scary Stars
  
• A Shortcut in Time
  Author: Dickinson, Charles
  Publisher: Forge $ 24.95 ISBN: 0765305798 Date: 2003
  LJ
  Dickinson's novels and short stories have won widespread acclaim for their deft characterization, humanity, and humor. Now Dickinson slips beyond the bounds of mundane realism to create a poignant fantasy that bears comparison to the work of Jack Finney and Jonathan Carroll.
  Updated 4.20.04
• Lost in a Good Book
  Author: Fforde, Jasper
  Publisher: Penguin $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670031909 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  Literary detective heroine Thursday Next returns in this follow-up to the acclaimed The Eyre Affair. To rescue the love of her life, Thursday must retrieve a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of Poe's "The Raven". Soon, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences.
  Suggested Reading: Alternative Fiction Stars
  
• 1632
  Author: Flint, Eric
  Publisher: Baen $ 24 ISBN: 0671578499 Date: 2000
  PW
  Updated 4.19.04
  1632 And in northern Germany things couldn't get much worse. Famine. Disease. Religous war laying waste the cities. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

  2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia, and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time. THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED.... - Publisher Marketing.
  Also: 1634
  Suggested Reading: Alternative Fiction Stars
  

• Making History
  Author: Fry, Stephen
  Publisher: Random $ 24 ISBN: 0679459553 Date: 1998
  Booklist
  An extravagantly imaginative, funny, and troubling supposition, Making History is based on a deceptively simple premise: What if Hitler had never been born? The most ambitious work yet by British actor/writer Stephen Fry.
  Suggested Reading: Alternative Fiction Stars
  
• Drums of Autumn
  Author: Gabaldon, Diana
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 27.95 ISBN:0385311400 Date: 1997
  PW
  From the bestselling author of Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, and Voyager comes the exquisite fourth novel in the romantic, time-travel saga of Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall. 1767: On the even of the American Revolution, Jamie and Claire land on the shores of Charleston to begin a new life. Jamie, determined to stay away from the rumblings of a war that is not his own, soon realizes that war spares no one--and that love is worth fighting for.
  Also: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, The Fiery Cross.
• The Accidental Time Machine
  Author: Haldeman, Joe
  Publisher: Berkley $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780441014996 Date: 2007
  PW
  From the winner of the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel comes this provocative story of a man who stumbles upon the discovery of a lifetime. When a laboratory calibrator turns into a time machine, lab assistant Matt Fuller has nothing to lose by taking the trip himself--or so he thinks.
  Updated 6.11.07
• A Fold in the Tent of the Sky
  Author: Hale, Michael
  Publisher: Morrow $ 25 ISBN:0688157572 Date: 1998
  Booklist
  Updated 4.21.04
• The Salt Roads
  Author: Hopkinson, Nalo
  Publisher: Warner $22.95 ISBN: 0446533025 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  Whirling with witchcraft and sensuality, this latest novel by Hopkinson (Skin Folk; Midnight Robber) is a globe-spanning, time-traveling spiritual odyssey."--Publishers Weekly.
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars
  Updated 4.8.04
• Slowness
  Author: Kundera, Milan
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 21 ISBN: 0060173696 Date: 1996
  PW
  Booklist Editors' Choice, NYTBR Notable, ALA Guide to Best Reading
  From one of the most distinguished writers of modern times comes a libertine fantasy which is also a profound meditation on contemporary life. Ruminating on how the pleasures of slowness have disappeared in today's fast-paced, future-shocked world, Kundera explores the secret bond between slowness and memory and the connection between our era's desire to forget and the ways in which we have given ourselves over to the demon of speed.
  
• The Time Traveler's Wife
  Author: Nifenegger, Audrey
  Publisher: Macadam Cage $ 25 ISBN: 1931561648 Date: 2003
  LJPW
  The love story of Henry and Claire whose lives are punctuated by Henry's disappearance to different points in time--sometimes even back to visit Claire as a young woman. When Henry meets Claire, he is twenty-eight, and she is twenty. He's a hip, handsome librarian; she is an art student with Botticelli hair. Henry has never met Claire before; Claire has known Henry since she was six...
  Suggested Reading: Librarian Stars
  
• Rainbow Mars
  Author: Niven, Larry
  Publisher: Tor $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312867778 Date: 1999
  Kirkus
  In this novel by a five-time Hugo Award winner, Hanville Svetz must travel back in time to retrieve Earth's extinct species. When Svetz learns that Mars was inhabited and how the sapient Martian species were wiped out, he realizes Earth could soon fall victim to the same fate.
  
• Flashforward
  Author: Sawyer, Robert J.
  Publisher: Tor $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312867123 Date: 1999
  PW
  In pursuit of an elusive nuclear particle, an experiment goes awry, throwing the consciousness of the entire human race ahead by 20 years. As the implications hit home, the pressure to repeat the experiment builds. Everyone wants a glimpse of their future.
  
• Angel of Forgetfulness
  Author: Stern, Steve
  Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670033871 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  This time-defying odyssey from the 1960s to the Lower East Side of New York at the turn of the 20th century features a detour through heaven on the wings of a derelict angel.
  Updated 2.7.05
• The Smithsonian Institution
  Author: Vidal, Gore
  Publisher: Random $ 23 ISBN:0375501215 Date: 1998
  Kirkus
  NTYBR Notable
  A teenage math genius is mysteriously summoned to the Smithsonian Institution, where a crash program to develop the atomic bomb is being conducted in the basement. Surrounded by figures from American history, the boy battles to save not just himself, but humanity.
  
• Cheops: A Cupboard for the Sun
  Author: West, Paul
  Publisher: New Directions $ 25.95 ISBN: 0811215199 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  Known for wrapping readers in his historical web, Paul West, in his marvelous, new novel, Cheops; A Cupboard for the Sun, turns his attention to the 4th Dynasty (approx. 2680 BC) of ancient Egypt. Here, we find the pharaoh Cheops, building the great pyramids at Giza, surrounded by workers and solar boats. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, "a hundred thousand men were made to toil constantly for him, " and, as Herodotus claimed, Egypt was "plunged into all manner of wickedness." In Cheops, West delightfully has Herodotus transported back in time, to meet the great pharaoh, face to face. Nearing death, getting ready for his final "transportation to the stars, " the blind Cheops is obsessed with preparing for his end. All the while, the intrigues of his daughters, sons, wives, and courtiers are revealed, uncovering murder, incest, and rebellion. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Alternative History Stars
  
• Doomsday Book
  Author: Willis, Connie
  Publisher: $ ISBN: Date:
  Kirkus
  Hugo Award, Nebula Award
  For nearly a decade, Willis had dazzled readers with her short fiction. Her first novel, Lincoln's Dreams, received unanimous high praise and won the John W. Campbell Award. Now she pens a sensational work about human struggle and redemption set in the time of the Black Plague.
  
• To Say Nothing of the Dog: How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last
  Author: Willis, Connie
  Publisher: Bantam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0553099957 Date: 1998
  PW
  PW Editor's Choice, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Alex Award
  It is 1888 and Ned Henry is shuttling between the 1940s and modern day, researching Coventry Cathedral for a patron who wants to rebuild it. But when the time continuum is disrupted, Ned must scramble to set things right.
  Updated 4.19.04
• A Scientific Romance
  Author: Wright, Ronald
  Publisher: Picador $ 23 ISBN: 0312181728 Date: 1998
  PW
  1999: David Lambert, jilted lover and museum curator, discovers the startling news of the return of H.G. Wells's time machine to London. Motivated by an innate curiosity, he propels himself deep into the next millennium.
  Updated 4.19.04

Classics:

• Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
• The House on the Strand by Daphne DuMarier
• Time and Again by Jack Finney
• From Time to Time by Jack Finney
• About Time by Jack Finney
• Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
• The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells

And . . .

• In Time of War and Twice Upon a Time by Allen Appel
• Finity by John Barnes
• The King by Donald Barthleme
• Changing the Past by Thomas Berger
• Tunneling by Beth Bosworth
• Riding Shotun by Rita Mae Brown
• Pastwatch and Enchanment by Orson Scott Card
• The Wonderland Gambit by Jack Chalker
• Foreign Bodies by Stephen Dedman
• Time on My Hand by Peter Delacorte
• The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson
• The Priest by Thomas Disch
• To Visit the Queen by Diane Duane
• In the Time of the Poisoned Queen by Ann Dukthas
• The Law of Love by Laura Esquivel
• Reflections on the Nile by J. Suzanne Frank
• The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
• The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
• Fallam's Secret by Denise Giardina
• Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
• Love Came Just in Time by Lynn Kurland
• Automated Alice by Jeff Noon
• Time Traders by Andre Norton
• The Time by Robert Silverberg
• The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber
• Going, Going, Gone by Jack Womack