62 books like A Stitch in Time

I was a foreign correspondent seven time zones from home when my father died of a sudden heart attack. My grief mixed with guilt for never having sat down with him to unravel his vague vignettes about life and loss in the Holocaust. I wondered, how did he survive when so many perished? How much depended on resilience, smarts, or dumb luck? As reporters do, I started digging. I uncovered a Nazi paper trial that tracked his life from home, through ghettos, slave labor, concentration camps, death marches, and more. The tattered documents revealed a man very different from the quiet, quintessential Type-B Dad I knew…or thought I knew. 

I have always had a wicked imagination and loved to tell stories. Unfortunately, this had me naively believing in fairy tales and happy endings. Cinderella has a lot to answer for. My kind heart and trusting nature were a magnet for bad men, and boy, did I suffer because of it. The term “Viking Berserker” comes to mind. This is why I have a passion for reading about strong women. I’ve learned (through reading books – such as those on my recommended list) that to survive, you have to have hope for a better future, and inspiring people – within inspiring stories – can often give you that hope.

I love reading novels that take me to another time, place, or adventure (an antithesis to my 30-year career as a professor teaching physiology & pathophysiology to medical and nursing students). I read for entertainment and variety. As an author, I write books I'd like to read! Drawn to history, I've written five historical romances—a woman of courage, intellect, and compassion at the heart of each. I've authored two contemporary espionage thrillers with a woman as the protagonist. I enjoy stepping out of the bounds of empiricism in my novels, blending genres, and stretching the imagination.

I love reading novels that take me to another time, place, or adventure (an antithesis to my 30-year career as a professor teaching physiology & pathophysiology to medical and nursing students). I read for entertainment and variety. As an author, I write books I'd like to read! Drawn to history, I've written five historical romances—a woman of courage, intellect, and compassion at the heart of each. I've authored two contemporary espionage thrillers with a woman as the protagonist. I enjoy stepping out of the bounds of empiricism in my novels, blending genres, and stretching the imagination.

Before I even started writing my outline, I spent four months researching everything I could on quantum entanglement. I read textbooks, watched seminars and lectures, and even went to Tokyo, Japan to visit the quantum physics exhibition at a museum! I have immersed myself in time travel novel, films, and even music (i.e., Electric Light Orchestra’s Time album, where my novel gets its title from—track #2 on the album is “Yours Truly, 2095”) since I was very young. I even gave a presentation to the Library of Congress on the differences between time travel with engineering and time travel with physics.

My first spoken word was “wishy” for horsey, yes, I was born with the horse gene. My medieval fetish is nearly as deep, starting at five years old when my aunt took me to see Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. As a kid, I lived my fantasies through drawing and painting, with stories always playing in my head. When the voices became too strong, I turned to writing. I have researched the Middle Ages into and beyond middle age, dragging my family from castle to cathedral. My husband and I live on and run a boarding ranch with nearly fifty horses. We no longer travel to Europe, but we ride and shoot. Thus, the research continues.    

While I can trace my love of romance books back to the bookmobile where I checked out every Sweet Dreams and V.C. Andrews book I could every Wednesday, I blame Anne Rice for my lifelong obsession with vampires, shifters, and alphas that go bump in the night. Paranormal romance has been my go-to for two decades, with contemporary romance coming in a close second in recent years. Although I write the stories I want to read, the books on this list have inspired me. The emotions and devotion they cultivate are what I aspire to create with my own books and I hope you love these as much as I do.

My book, No Safe Haven was written about the American Civil War, most specifically about the Battle of Gettysburg. It was a story I came across while on vacation in Gettysburg. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and History and the historical novel genre is one I love. It gives me an opportunity to explore past worlds and try to learn the lessons of the past to apply to the present and hopefully to the future. When I learned about Tillie Pierce’s experience surviving the Battle of Gettysburg, I knew I had to tell her story.

I've been fascinated with time travel since I was young, and that's been a few moons. When the idea came to write books that play with time and space and cloak them in a romantic comedy, I got in my favorite writing chair to see who showed up with a story. I want to entice readers to take the journey, pondering suppose we could time travel? I think time is malleable, at least in my characters' hands. And they've done an excellent job of keeping me intrigued with their escapades in the past and present. I hope you enjoy the books I chose to recommend as much as I did. 

I’m Jill Santopolo, a novelist, editor, and mom who was born in New York and currently lives in Washington, DC. I’ve written Everything After, More Than Words, and The Light We Lost, which was the Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick in February 2018. My books have been named to The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Apple, and Indiebound bestseller lists, and have been translated into more than 35 languages. I love Instagram and rarely ever use Twitter (but you can find me there, too)--and music makes my heart sing. When I was growing up I learned to play the piano, flute, and piccolo, and I loved singing and dancing.