Book cover of Bid Time Return

Book description

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

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Bid Time Return as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

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…

Most people will know Bid Time Return from its Christopher Reeve film adaptation, Somewhere in Time. In the novel and movie, the main character is transported back and forth without a physical device, just through self-hypnosis. Some believe there is a touch of science to self-hypnosis. This story has spoken to me since I first saw the film as a young child. The story focuses more on the dynamics of the two characters, who are separated by an era, and less on the adventures of time travel. While this is more of a romance story at…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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