I’ve always loved the idea of time travel. I was born in a Northern mill town where King Cotton ruled. By the time I was a teenager, all the mills had shut, leaving behind empty hulks. I desperately wanted to experience the town in its heyday. I devoured the Blackburn-set memoir The Road to Nab End, by William Woodruff: I could hear the clogs strike the cobbles, picture the waves of workers, smell the belching chimneys. While I couldn’t travel back in time for real, I could in my imagination. My debut children’s novel, out in Spring 2026, is about a time-travelling seventh son.
I wrote
Northern Boy: A big Bollywood dream. A small-town chance.
I’ve always been fascinated by terrible periods in history: the Nazis, witchcraft trials, and the American Deep South in the days of slavery. I need to know why people behaved in the heinous ways they did; paradoxically, a bit like time travel, the more I read, the less things make sense.
Our heroine is an African-American woman from modern times who finds herself sent back to early nineteenth-century Maryland when slavery was rife. We experience her reactions to it through a modern lens. It reminded me of the TV series Outlander in the way it builds whole lives back in time. It didn’t pull any punches and wasn’t always easy reading, but I couldn’t put it down.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner
The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.
“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”
Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon…
Matt Haig is one of those rare writers whose every book is great. And this is no exception. It’s the story of Tom Hazard, a nondescript English teacher–except he’s actually 400 years old and has lived many lives. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of what I would do if I could live my life over. Mind you, it’s not all fun.
Tom has to keep moving, as his non-ageing appearance would become a red flag to others. So he’s not able to fall in love either. There’s a lot of sadness and loneliness in the book, and many times, I found myself asking what I’d do in that situation. It's a beautiful read.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library.
"A quirky romcom dusted with philosophical observations....A delightfully witty...poignant novel." -The Washington Post
How many lifetimes does it take to learn how to live?
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old history teacher, but he's been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to Jazz-Age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen it all. As long as he keeps changing his identity he can keep one step ahead of his past - and stay alive. The only thing he…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
I came across this book via the film Somewhere in Time, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. Then I discovered that this heart-achingly romantic story of love across the ages was based on a book by science fiction writer Matheson, who also wrote I Am Legend. As with Kindred, the main character goes back in time from the 1970s.
What I especially loved was the mechanism for the time travel–immersing yourself in everything about the time you wanted to go back to, including clothes, money, and even the furnishings and decoration of the room in which you’re in, and then imagining yourself there. I spent many hours as a teenager trying to enact the same method to go back in time. Sadly, I wasn’t successful.
Staying at an old hotel, Richard Collier sees a photograph of Elise McKenna, an actress who performed there in 1896, and as he researches her life he becomes more deeply in love with her, until he finds himself transported back in time
This book shares a similar theme to How to Stop Time in that the main character lives through time without aging, from 18th-century France to present-day Manhattan. Addie has made a pact with the devil–immortality, but the price is she’ll be forgotten by everyone she meets. That concept really struck me–what does it mean to be remembered? What does it mean to be forgotten?
I always wanted to be a writer, and part of the reason was that I’d be remembered at some level. There’s a lot of sadness in the book but also hope. In the end, Addie comes across a book with a name she recognizes. Inside is the following inscription: “I remember you.” My heart melted.
"For someone damned to be forgettable, Addie LaRue is a most delightfully unforgettable character, and her story is the most joyous evocation of unlikely immortality." -Neil Gaiman
A Sunday Times-bestselling, award-nominated genre-defying tour-de-force of Faustian bargains, for fans of The Time Traveler's Wife and Life After Life, and The Sudden Appearance of Hope.
When Addie La Rue makes a pact with the devil, she is convinced she's found a loophole-immortality in exchange for her soul. But the devil takes away her place in the world, cursing her to be forgotten by everyone.
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
“My dad died twice. But only the second time was my fault.” How could I resist such an intriguing strapline? This book tugged on all my strings–I laughed throughout. It had a male, mixed-race protagonist (not common in children’s books), and there were plenty of moments of pathos to balance the humor.
It’s so tightly plotted, with a totally believable time travel set-up involving an old computer and a tin bath (don’t ask!), that it’s hard to believe it was Welford’s debut novel. The ending was interesting–and made me really think about what we want from a time travel tale. What ends up being changed for everyone else as a result of the new future? Is it a happy ending for all?
For readers who loved Wonder and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time this extraordinary debut will make you laugh and cry.
A story that crosses time and generations, for adventure-loving readers young and old.
"My dad died twice. Once when he was thirty nine and again four years later when he was twelve."
On Al Chaudhury's twelfth birthday his beloved Grandpa Byron gives him a letter from Al's late father. In it Al receives a mission: travel back to 1984 in a secret time machine and save his father's life.
A coming-of-age novel set in the early 1980s in Blackburn, Lancashire. Rafi Aziz is a flamboyant, gregarious, precocious ten-year-old, every inch his doting Mother’s son. His music teacher describes him as a “butterfly among the bricks”. To his surprise, Rafi realizes he’s not everyone’s cup of masala chai. If he’s going to be true to himself, he’ll have to make difficult decisions. We follow Rafi over the years to see how he plows his own glittery path.
The book is a cross between Billy Elliot and all those feel-good British films such as Brassed Off, Kinky Boots, and Fisherman’s Friends, with added Bollywood and ABBA. Take a trip back in time, when there were just three TV channels, Sundays were shut for shops, and fashion forgot itself!
