Here are 100 books that Bid Time Return fans have personally recommended if you like
Bid Time Return.
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Each of these novels, in their own way, forces us to confront the realities of war and power, showing how fragile humanity truly is. They’ve inspired me to reflect on how interconnected we are, especially regarding the scars of conflict. I am reminded of the John Donne poem that inspired Hemingway’s title, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)–which begins: “No man is an island, intire of its selfe; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the maine.” War doesn’t just affect the soldiers: war has its hooks in us all.
Vonnegut’s book is a unique combination of satire, science fiction, and raw war critique. Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist, lives out the trauma of surviving the Dresden bombing by becoming "unstuck in time," drifting through different moments of his life, from past to future. This strange, nonlinear structure mirrors how we process trauma in fragments and waves, never in a neat, chronological order. The randomness of death, the meaninglessness of war—all these themes come together in a way that’s both absurd and deeply moving. As we witness terror and violence continually unfold across the globe, the echoes of Slaughterhouse-Five feel ever-present.
The phrase “So it goes” serves as a refrain throughout the novel, after every death—reminding us of the inevitability of loss in wartime, no matter the scale. This book hit me hard with its dark humor and cynical commentary on the glorification of war. Vonnegut forces you to laugh in…
A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had…
The stars aligned to ignite my passion for magic-realism romance after a few things had happened. 1) I got heavily into the idea of the multiverse and alternate realities in high school, having been inspired by my physics teacher. 2) I read and fell in love with The Time Traveler’s Wife (see list!). 3) I binge-watched the incredible sci-fi show Fringe, which deals with parallel universes and time jumps. 4) I decided to write my first multiverse romance, inspired by all the above factors and more besides. Since then, I’ve focused most of my reading on romantic novels, with those that share a magic realism twist being auto-reads—of course!
While not perhaps a “romance” novel in the established-formula sense, this book is achingly romantic. This epic story truly focuses on the gradual development of the two protagonists’ relationship and how time travel both created and challenged their love. This book ignited my passion for magic-realism romantic novels and remains one of my top books of all time.
I adore the contrast of romantic love between two seemingly destined souls and the brutality of some events caused by Henry’s uncontrolled time travel. There’s also the tricky angle of the age gap (only sometimes, depending on where Henry and Clare are in their lives, but it is occasionally extreme), which the author doesn’t shy away from. And I confess this is probably the book that made me sob the most!
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…
I’m a writer and musician with a background in mathematics, which is what originally led to my intrigue in cosmology. For writing speculative fiction, I’ve dug into a range of topics from quantum mechanics to cognitive theory, but spacetime had the opposite causality: my interest later spawned my writing. When I first learned about special relativity, many aspects seemed counterintuitive but were mathematically sound, leading me to obsessively read books, watch videos, and perform hours of calculations to get a feel for it. And what draws my adoration most to the cosmos is the quality it shares with dinosaurs—the more I learn, the more majestic it becomes.
Crichton is, without question, my favorite author, and what I love most about his books is the singular word that defines them all: immersive. As one of the later Crichton books I read, I actually saw the movie adaptation of this book first, and I cannot stress enough how much better the book is.
The details involved build both a compelling representation of 14th century France, complete with indecipherable language, and a believable mechanism for that time travel based on quantum mechanics, more than a decade before the boom of multiverse fiction.
In this thriller from the author of Jurassic Park, Sphere, and Congo, a group of young scientists travel back in time to medieval France on a daring rescue mission that becomes a struggle to stay alive.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Compulsive reading . . . brilliantly imagined.”—Los Angeles Times
In an Arizona desert, a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world, archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to…
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 Timealbum, 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.
While it’s hard to dismiss 12 Monkeys on a list of fiction where there are not machines creating the passage for time travel (even though it was never a novel), I have to say Jack London’sThe Jacket does a better job at being subtle. The novel was adapted into a film in 2005 and follows a main character who experiences a time slip at the point of a near-death experience when he is in confined situations (i.e., when they think he’s dead and put him in a casket or when they need to subdue him in a straitjacket.) These tight confines of space initiate his ability to time travel through teetering on the brink of death. The story is slightly more ‘spiritual’ than ‘science based,’ but I felt it stood out as a good example of using the power inside of us to be able to defy the fabric…
The Jacket (1915) is a novel by American writer Jack London. A groundbreaking work of science fiction that blends elements of mysticism, The Jacket critiques the harsh reality of the American criminal justice system. The novel was inspired by the experiences of Ed Morrell, a man who spent time at San Quentin State Prison for robbing trains. Horrified by his description of "the jacket," a constricting device used to punish inmates, London wrote the novel to explore the psychological effects of torture. Darrell Standing was a Professor of Agronomics at the University of California, Berkeley when, in a fit of…
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.
Sometimes I want to be emotionally destroyed and when I do, this is the series I return to. Kenyon has a way of developing her fantasy world and those who inhabit it so fully that reading this series feels less like an escape and more like an immersion. This series is a different take on the vampire genre, bringing in Greek mythology to expand the lore of Kenyon’s world. The heroines are strong, the heroes are perfectly flawed, and this is the series I turn to when I want to feel every emotion on the spectrum.
It might sound like a man's favorite fantasy - to live forever, destined to be the lover of thousands of women. But for Julian of Macedon, it's a nightmare. Once he was a proud Spartan general; now he's a love-slave, his essence magically held captive in a book, cursed to spend all eternity pleasing women. Then, one day, Grace Alexander summons Julian to fulfill her passionate dreams - and sees beyond the fantasy to the man himself.
Long years as a sex therapist, listening to other people's bedroom problems, have taken a lot of the fun out of the physical…
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.
This is the third in the Outlander series and was quite serendipitously the first of her books my husband and I listened to. He checked out the audio cassette version from the library and brought it on a kids-free trip to Maui…Maui, no kids, a hot-date-night book every day and night. This third book stands alone and has enough backstory to bring the listener/reader up to speed on this adventure/romance across time and distance even without reading Outlander or Dragonfly in Amber (which we did as soon as we got home). Living history through the lens of Jamie Frazier in 1740s Scotland and the Caribbean, and the dual time perspective of Claire, a 1940s time traveler is a riveting ride, again with characters that cause me to laugh, cry and, of course, bleed out. Ms. Gabaldon is also a gracious woman with her time and inspiration at writer’s conferences and…
THE THIRD NOVEL IN THE BESTSELLING OUTLANDER SERIES, NOW A HIT TV SHOW
Jamie Fraser is lying on the battlefield of Culloden, where he rises wounded, to face execution or imprisonment. Either prospect pales beside the pain of loss - his wife is gone. Forever.
But sometimes forever is shorter than one thinks. In 1746, Claire Fraser made a perilous journey through time, leaving her young husband to die at Culloden, in order to protect their unborn child. In 1968, Claire has just been struck through the heart, discovering that Jamie Fraser didn't die in battle.
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 historical fiction that adds an element of fantasy, magical realism, or time travel. I like the expansion of the mind that accompanies appreciation of these novels. (Yes, I admit that appreciation guided me in writing one of my series in the historical/romance/fantasy blended genre.) A Stitch in Time is a time travel novel of romance in which the heroine slips through time to the Victorian English countryside. She moves back and forth from the present to the past. The story is complete with a haunted manor house, ghosts, mystery, and love unbounded by time.
If my description seems banal, I apologize, for this is an intelligently crafted story. The author's sentences are beautifully written, leading the readers into the inner thoughts of the character. I just recently discovered this prolific author, and I'm a big fan!
Thorne Manor has always been haunted…and it has always haunted Bronwyn Dale. As a young girl, Bronwyn could pass through a time slip in her great-aunt’s house, where she visited William Thorne, a boy her own age, born two centuries earlier. After a family tragedy, the house was shuttered and Bronwyn was convinced that William existed only in her imagination. Now, twenty years later Bronwyn inherits Thorne Manor. And when she returns, William is waiting. William Thorne is no longer the boy she remembers. He’s a difficult and tempestuous man, his own life marred by tragedy and a scandal that…
Hi! I'm Joanne Starer, and I write comics based my own messy relationships, like in Total Suplex of the Heart. And sometimes, I write about messy and complicated friendships, like Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville. Sometimes, I make comics with my actual boyfriend, Khary Randolph, like Sirens of the City. So you could say relationships are kind of my thing.
Not for the kids, but a great laugh for the adults–this book is about two people who stop time when they orgasm. They decide to use this power to rob a bank so they can save the local library with the funds. But like all the books on this list, this is actually a story about relationships.
This one comes with a heavy dose of comedy…inappropriate, sexytime comedy. But there are also very relatable, heartbreaking moments where the characters grapple with their own sexuality and how it’s affected their lives and relationships. Just a great time and filled with visual gags from Zdarsky. And don’t skip the letters column!
All 31 award-winning, headline-grabbing, head-spinning, genre-defying issues of SEX CRIMINALS collected in one soft unthreatening volume celebrating its tenth-ish anniversary.
Bonnie & Clyde meets The 40-Year-Old Virgin by way of When Harry Met Sally—only none of these orgasms are fake!
When Suzie and Jon have sex, time stops. Literally. So they have lots of sex, fall in love, and eventually start robbing banks. Until they find out they’re not alone…
Collects Sex Criminals issues # 1- #30 & the one-shot special issue #69.
Select praise & accolades for the Sex Criminals series:
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.
A romance novel by one of the funniest writers I’ve encountered in a long time. Her stories are racy, but the humor is outstanding leaving me to laugh out loud on any number of occasions. I’ve recently discovered Rachel Gibson and I highly recommend her books if you’re looking for humor in love and life.
They say that opposites attract... which might explain why sexy, successful Adele Harris is such a loser-magnet! Frankly, she attracts so many weridos and nut-jobs that she's beginning to think that she's cursed. And it's about to get worse.
When Adele heads home to Cedar Creek, Texas, she runs into her first-ever bad date - the delicious Zach - and it seems he wants a second chance. Like she'd ever let him (big ol' drop-dead-gorgeous him) near her heart again. Uh-huh. No way. Ain't never gonna happen...
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, ponderingsuppose 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.
A dream-activated time travel story. Now that's one I couldn't resist and fortunately, I didn't.
The reader follows the character, Quinn, on a journey as her dreams bring a man that stirs her like no other. Problem? Nick enters her real world, too. They have a history. Complications? Oh, he's dreaming about her, too.
Can they figure out a way to stay connected and understand what's happening? Let’s hope.
Warning: it's a series, but after reading the first book, you'll be glad there's more from this talented author.
