It’s been said — accurately, in my opinion — that the idea of visiting the past is really only attractive to straight, white men. For others, the further back you go, the worse things get. Still, after the last couple of years, with the present problematic at best and the future looking grim, I think most people would jump at the chance to go back at least a few years…maybe even further if you could change things, as opposed to merely being a temporal tourist in yesteryear. With that in mind, here’s a look at five time travel novels in which the past looks like a better tomorrow…
Four teens have dug up the time capsule that their parents buried in 1986 and never bothered to recover. But in addition to the expected ephemera of mixtapes, Walkmans, photographs, letters, toys, and assorted junk, Elayah, Liam, Marcie, and Jorja discover something sinister: a hunting knife stained with blood and wrapped with a note. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to kill anyone."
As the action dramatically alternates between the present day and 1986, the mystery unfolds and the sins of the past echo into today. The teens haven't just unearthed a time capsule: they've also dug up pain and secrets that someone--maybe one of their own parents--is willing to kill for.
OK, this may be cheating a little bit since Henry travels not merely to the past, but also the future, but still — Niffenegger’s debut novel is a sumptuous, gorgeous feast of words, a truly personal and intimate look at the perils and pleasures of time travel. Since Henry’s jaunts align along his own timeline, he is constantly reliving his own past and anticipating his own reactions to his known-but-unavoidable future.
Now a series on HBO starring Rose Leslie and Theo James!
The iconic time travel love story and mega-bestselling first novel from Audrey Niffenegger is "a soaring celebration of the victory of love over time" (Chicago Tribune).
Henry DeTamble is a dashing, adventurous librarian who is at the mercy of his random time time-traveling abilities. Clare Abshire is an artist whose life moves through a natural sequential course. This is the celebrated and timeless tale of their love. Henry and Clare's passionate affair is built and endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap…
King applies his considerable talents to healing the primal wound of the Baby Boomers — the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Jake Epping has discovered a portal to the past. And here’s the gimmick — it’s a two-way door, but every time you return to the past, you return to the exact same time, September 9, 1958. So Epping decides to relocate to the fifties and work his way toward 1963 and that fateful day in Dallas. But the universe itself seems bound and determined to stop him from saving JFK…and even if he can, will the future be worth returning to?
Now a major TV series from JJ Abrams and Stephen King, starring James Franco (Hulu US, Fox UK and Europe, Stan Australia, SKY New Zealand).
WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? 11.22.63, the date that Kennedy was shot - unless . . .
King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, on a fascinating journey back to 1958 - from a world of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of…
This delightful graphic novel puts a new spin on the age-old question: If you could travel back in time and kill Hitler, would you? Well, duh! The question is old and the answer is obvious, so our intrepid hero heads to the past to bump off Adolf in 1939. But things go awry — Hitler overpowers his would-be assassin and steals the time machine. Now the assassin has no choice but to live out the decades in order to catch up with the present and complete the mission of killing a now-contemporary Hitler. And if you think you know where this is headed, well, you don’t — because there’s also the killer’s girlfriend to consider!
Unavailable since 2014, I Killed Adolf Hitler is back in print in a newly designed edition!
In this graphic novel, a hitman travels back in time to kill Adolf Hitler in 1939... but things go spectacularly wrong. Full-color illustrations throughout.
Will killing Hitler ever not be the time travel question du jour? Maybe not, but this book takes a different tack, as a group of 21st century elitists, dissatisfied with their utopia, decide that helping Hitler would lead to a world more suited to their tastes. So they send back weapons and advisors to prop up Nazi Germany. This means, of course, that their foes — our heroes! — have to chase their way into the past and prop up none other than Winston Churchill as a counter to the rise of Hitler. The result is both not what you expect and also exactly what you expect.
In a world in which Hitler was victorious in World War II, a select group of American diplomats, scientists, and commandos journey back through time to 1939 to change the course of the war and history
This book isn’t just my favorite time travel novel — it might be my favorite novel, period. Jeff Winston, in his forties and trapped in a miserable marriage, dies of a massive heart attack on page one. But don’t worry! By page four, Jeff has opened his eyes again, only to discover that he is in his own nineteen-year-old body, decades in the past, with the full memory of everything that will transpire in the interim. You think you know where this is headed, but you don’t — Grimwood’s tour de force contains a terrific twist on time travel that makes this a story about coming to terms with who you are and who you want to be.
At forty-three Jeff Winston is tired of his low-paid, unrewarding job, tired of the long silences at the breakfast table with his wife, saddened by the thought of no children to comfort his old age. But he hopes for better things, for happiness, maybe tomorrow ...
But a sudden, fatal heart attack puts paid to that. Until Jeff wakes up in his eighteen-year-old body, all his memories of the next twenty-five years intact. If he applies those memories, he can be rich in this new chance at life and can become one of the most powerful men in America.
I grew up in Green Bay and my dad was the official scorer for the Packers, so I was immersed in pro football history even as a child. During my careers as a newspaper feature writer and editor and as an advertising copywriter, I also became a sports historian. My magnum opus was “The Encyclopedia of North American Sports History,” 650,000 words. But my favorite by far is my biography of Johnny Blood. I was 12 or 13 when I decided I wanted to write it, 33 when I began working on it, 38 when I finished it, and 78 when it was finally published.
From Kirkus Reviews: "This debut short-story collection paints the wistful life of a newspaper journalist as seen through his sexual and romantic encounters...
Throughout, Hickok writes in an assured style, pulling readers along. The narrow sexual focus results in a distorted picture, yet other aspects of Art's life emerge at the edges—his intelligence, his career as a journalist, and even the sincerity with which he gives in to his male urges and construes sex as love...
Subdued yet alluring; a pensive reflection on the male psyche."
Love, Sex, and Other Calamities: 15 Stories and a Poem by Ralph Hickok
A man arrives in a new city, hoping to start a new life, but he’s still haunted by memories of past loves… A 12-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl have a brief romantic encounter when their families are vacationing in neighboring lakeside cottages… Two teenagers enjoy sexual experimentation when she babysits for her little brother while her parents are out drinking… A high school boy has a crush on an older woman who identifies with Molly Bloom… A college freshman falls in love with a high school freshman and is amazed at the depths of her passion… A guy wins…
