Here are 100 books that How to Stop Time fans have personally recommended if you like
How to Stop Time.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Who can really claim that they know everything about the human heart, the mind, the soul? The infinite mysteries and complexities of what makes someone who we can call “human.” I'm betting no one. Certainly not me. But what's important is the passion to keep exploring, to keep digging through the mind in an effort to understand myself. That effort, along with what I discover, is one of the most tangible things that not only enriches my living life, but also gives me comfort facing the inevitable end. These books were passionate companions, inspiring me, for however long, to further my efforts in self-discovery.
This book resonated with me because it’s the story of a journey. A journey of personal discovery and resilience.
I know what it’s like to lose loved ones. My whole family is gone. I know what’s it’s like to have the life you’ve led, the life you’ve believed in, be dismantled. And I know what it’s like to go on an expedition to find yourself again.
It doesn’t matter how that expedition takes form; the journey to find yourself again is powerful, and I’m still on that road.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I don’t believe in ghosts, but fascination with the supernatural has been with me since childhood, my inquiring mind constantly seeking answers. Research through books and documentaries and talking to people on the subject leads me to conclude there has to be a scientific and rational explanation for every paranormal happening. Theories abound, none are conclusive, but one accepted theory stands out, and this is explored and expanded upon in my novel White Stones. The books chosen here are excellent examples in the world of the supernatural and paranormal and are worth reading whether you believe in ghosts or not. Some just might make you change your mind.
I fell in love with this author’s exploration into the hypothesis of drug-induced time travel written by one of our great English authors, skillfully weaving psychology with science and historical fiction. In it, Dick Young is persuaded by a friend to try a new drug. Dick likes where it takes him, and each time takes more and more. A classic case of addition but the story awakened in me a passion for asking what if… that later turned into a greater passion for the unexplained and paranormal in all its forms, in turn leading me to question whether re-incarnation, deja-vu, ghostly visitations or time travel were possible, and if so, how.
In this haunting tale, Daphne du Maurier takes a fresh approach to time travel. A secret experimental concoction, once imbibed, allows you to return to the fourteenth century. There is only one catch: if you happen to touch anyone while traveling in the past you will be thrust instantaneously to the present. Magnus Lane, a University of London chemical researcher, asks his friend Richard Young and Young's family to stay at Kilmarth, an ancient house set in the wilds near the Cornish coast. Here, Richard drinks a potion created by Magnus and finds himself at the same spot where he…
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’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…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
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.
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.
I’m a writer with two sisters very different from me in lifestyle. For example, one went into nursing (I hate blood!), and one was a bookkeeper (I also hate numbers!) I first wrote about loving but dissimilar sisters in a cozy series called The Sleuth Sisters Mysteries, under the pen name Maggie Pill. The books are fun, and readers often tell me which of the sisters they most identify with. “I’m Barb,” or “I’m the nice one.” Seven books later, I found I wanted to examine the darker side of sisterhood. What if things your sister does (or sisters do) make you uncomfortable? What wins: family loyalty or personal integrity?
I liked the premise of this one: Kit’s sister Josie was supposedly killed in a terrorist attack, but one night she sees her on a TV news report in faraway New Zealand.
We might all wonder what we would do if the chance to find and reunite with a lost loved one arose. Questions must be asked and answered: Why did she leave? How could she let us grieve all this time? What happens if I find her?
An Amazon Charts, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller.
From the author of The Art of Inheriting Secrets comes an emotional new tale of two sisters, an ocean of lies, and a search for the truth.
Her sister has been dead for fifteen years when she sees her on the TV news...
Josie Bianci was killed years ago on a train during a terrorist attack. Gone forever. It's what her sister, Kit, an ER doctor in Santa Cruz, has always believed. Yet all it takes is a few heart-wrenching seconds to upend Kit's world. Live coverage of…
Sandy is a writer, traveller, and hopeful romantic with a lengthy bucket list, and many of her travel adventures have found homes in her novels. She’s also an avid reader, a film buff, a wine lover, and a coffee snob. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her partner, Ben, who she met while travelling in Greece. Their real-life love story inspired Sandy’s debut novel One Summer in Santorini, the first in the five-book Holiday Romance series. The series continues in Paris, Sydney, Bali, and Tuscany. Sandy's standalone novel The Christmas Swap celebrates her favourite time of the year, and her rom-com, The Dating Game, is set in the world of Reality TV.
Kaye’s own diagnosis of a neurological disease sparked the idea for this terrific book―the protagonist, Alex, is diagnosed with MS and transforms her life to avoid being seen as ‘the victim.’ Like the author, Alex displays incredible bravery―she’s terrified of what’s to come but makes active steps in her life to follow her professional and creative dreams, as well as letting someone new into her life. This one tugged at my heartstrings.
Meet Alex. She has a wonderful fiance, a job she thrives in, and a best friend she's known since childhood. Life's not perfect, but it's pretty fantastic. Until a shock diagnosis suddenly throws everything off course.
But Alex has never been one to back down from a fight. Now single and unemployed, she packs up and moves from her Glasgow hometown to vibrant Birmingham for a fresh start. In a new job, in a new city, she's learning all over again what's important in life.
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
Sandy is a writer, traveller, and hopeful romantic with a lengthy bucket list, and many of her travel adventures have found homes in her novels. She’s also an avid reader, a film buff, a wine lover, and a coffee snob. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her partner, Ben, who she met while travelling in Greece. Their real-life love story inspired Sandy’s debut novel One Summer in Santorini, the first in the five-book Holiday Romance series. The series continues in Paris, Sydney, Bali, and Tuscany. Sandy's standalone novel The Christmas Swap celebrates her favourite time of the year, and her rom-com, The Dating Game, is set in the world of Reality TV.
This is such a fun read―a fictionalised account of the real-life husband and wife’s experience of walking the Camino de Santiago. I love how the two protagonists, who start as strangers, take turns to tell their stories, especially the hilarity in the ‘he said–she said’ of their relationship―they really are opposites but both bring out something remarkable in the other. Romantic in a very real way.
'Charming and absorbing' Daily Mail 'Sleepless in Seattle meets Wild . . . A beautifully crafted tale of love, self-acceptance, and blisters' Sunday Express
A smart, funny novel of second chances and reinvention from the author of The Rosie Result - two misfits walk 2,000 km along the Camino to find themselves and, perhaps, each other.
Zoe, a sometime artist, is from California. Martin, an engineer, is from Yorkshire. Both have ended up in picturesque Cluny, in central France. Both are struggling to come to terms with their recent past - for Zoe, the death of her…
It’s quite simple, I just love history. I particularly like the dual timeline format because it’s a reminder that what has happened in the past remains relevant to the present. The narratives might be set hundreds of years apart, but there are common themes that continue to shape our lives and define us as human beings–some of them good and others that are potentially more destructive. I now write this sort of fiction, and I continue to devour it as a reader. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have.
I’m so glad that I didn’t have a lot of big deadlines looming when I started reading this epic story, because I would have failed to meet them. I couldn’t put it down–all 757 pages of it!
I’ve since visited many of the places and some of the castles that feature in Matilda’s story, and I’ve walked in her footsteps with her voice still ringing inside my head. I found the sinister re-telling in the modern-day story of cynical journalist Jo Clifford equally gripping.
As the past starts to manifest in the present, it becomes a psychological thriller to rival the best of that genre. It is simply a masterpiece of dual-timeline fiction.
A story spanning centuries. A long awaited revenge.
In London, journalist Jo Clifford plans to debunk the belief in past-lives in a hard-hitting magazine piece. But her scepticism is shaken when a hypnotist forces her to relive the experiences of Matilda, Lady of Hay, a noblewoman during the reign of King John.
She learns of Matilda's unhappy marriage, her love for the handsome Richard de Clare, and the brutal death threats handed out by King John, before it becomes clear that Jo's past and present are inevitably entwined. She realises that eight hundred years on, Matilda's story of secret passion…
I don’t believe in ghosts, but fascination with the supernatural has been with me since childhood, my inquiring mind constantly seeking answers. Research through books and documentaries and talking to people on the subject leads me to conclude there has to be a scientific and rational explanation for every paranormal happening. Theories abound, none are conclusive, but one accepted theory stands out, and this is explored and expanded upon in my novel White Stones. The books chosen here are excellent examples in the world of the supernatural and paranormal and are worth reading whether you believe in ghosts or not. Some just might make you change your mind.
This book by real-life ghost hunter Peter Underwood is an amazing attempt to demystify some of the most famous haunted sites across the globe, seeking out evidence, personal and witness experiences in an attempt to explain the inexplicable. In many cases he comes up with possible answers, often using the excuse of mental instability in those witnesses to prove his argument. For me, many of his conclusions were not convincing enough, this paucity of believable truth inspiring my own research and desire to debunk the whole concept of ghosts and hauntings. From it, I have learned that though most occurrences can be explained away, there is still much in this world that defies rational logic.
In this fascinating account of the best-attested cases of haunting - Hampton Court, the demon drummer of Bedworth, the Wesley ghost, Glamis, Borley Rectory and many others - Britain's foremost ghost-hunter has brought to light a wealth of valuable new evidence. Using the results of his many years of research and personal investigation into ghosts and hauntings, and providing detailed plans and original photographs, Peter Underwood puts forward some exciting and startling theories which will radically change our ideas about these hauntings.
Many hauntings can be explained without resorting to the supernatural or the paranormal. The author shows indisputable evidence…
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…
I don’t believe in ghosts, but fascination with the supernatural has been with me since childhood, my inquiring mind constantly seeking answers. Research through books and documentaries and talking to people on the subject leads me to conclude there has to be a scientific and rational explanation for every paranormal happening. Theories abound, none are conclusive, but one accepted theory stands out, and this is explored and expanded upon in my novel White Stones. The books chosen here are excellent examples in the world of the supernatural and paranormal and are worth reading whether you believe in ghosts or not. Some just might make you change your mind.
Many might class this as a horror novel. I don’t. For me it’s a beautiful, spellbinding story of a cottage in the country that has feelings, both good and bad. How many of us have walked into a house and felt its vibe? That moment you know something’s not right or conversely, is perfect. A feeling Mike is not sure about but his wife is. Combining magic with mystery, fear with fantasy, it is one of those stories that defies a scientific, logical explanation and one of the few books I have read several times, each time coming up with a different theory of how it could even be possible. Sometimes we simply have to suspend belief.
Step inside The Magic Cottage, another chilling classic from the Master of Horror James Herbert.
A cottage was found in the heart of the forest. It was charming, maybe a little run-down, but so peaceful - a magical haven for creativity and love. But the cottage had an alternative side - the bad magic. What happened there was horrendous beyond belief . . .
