Here are 93 books that Somewhere in Time fans have personally recommended if you like
Somewhere in Time.
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The things that I am most interested in are books that are deliciously fun to read and books that pick you up out of your comfortable chair and drag you across a fantastic landscape. What does that require? Three Ws for starters. Wit: both on the part of the characters and the author—I like smart characters, biting banter, and clever turns of phrase and story. Weird: in the sense of the unusual and mysterious—good world-building coupled with mysteries meant to be unraveled by the reader as much as by the characters. Wild: fast-paced action filled with sudden turns and unexpected drops and conversations that are three parts well-written words and two parts fencing without a blade.
As a general rule, I don’t like time-travel novels, but I love this one. In Anubis Gates, Tim creates a perfect looping paradox in which our literary historian protagonist finds himself traveling back to the period of his expertise and discovering that every critical beat of his subject matter is both exactly as he learned it and a complete surprise that could only have happened through his own direct intervention.
Talking plot would spoil a beautiful and perfectly constructed puzzle full of mystery and revelation. Tim is a master of interweaving actual historical research with the fantastic, illuminating and personalizing the former while rendering the latter unreasonably plausible. Tim’s writing is always beautiful and clever, and that shows in both the prose and the clockwork precision of the plot.
Weird touches every paragraph of this book from the stilt-walking evil harlequin, Horabin, through the spoon-size boys in their eggshell fleet,…
Brendan Doyle is a twentieth-century English professor who travels back to 1810 London to attend a lecture given by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This is a London filled with deformed clowns, organised beggar societies, insane homunculi and magic.
When he is kidnapped by gypsies and consequently misses his return trip to 1983, the mild-mannered Doyle is forced to become a street-smart con man, escape artist, and swordsman in order to survive in the dark and treacherous London underworld. He defies bullets, black magic, murderous beggars, freezing waters, imprisonment in mutant-infested dungeons, poisoning, and even a plunge back to…
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 have been writing for almost all of my adult life. In my previous role as a school administrator, I published more than a dozen articles for professional journals. Then, a few articles began appearing in popular magazines, both followed by speaking engagements across the country. When I retired from public school service, I took the leap to the novel. Fools and Children and Ticket to Oregon are the result.
I read this book before King became a household name. It was his first big hit and set off a career unmatched in the horror genre. Read as a referral from a friend, I was immediately struck by his uncanny ability to detail a scene.
While not particularly a fan of horror stories, I certainly have read at least eight more King books. I believe him to the master of his ilk.
#1 BESTSELLER • Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in hopes that exploring the history of the Marsten House, an old mansion long the subject of rumor and speculation, will help him cast out his personal devils and provide inspiration for his new book.
But when two young boys venture into the woods, and only one returns alive, Mears begins to realize that something sinister is at work.
In fact, his hometown is under siege from forces of darkness far beyond his imagination. And only he, with a small group of allies, can hope to contain the evil that…
Stormwalker Series Connections In Time Bain's Story
by
S.G. Boudreaux,
Finding Family, Discovery, Destiny. This is what nineteen-year-old Bain Brinley is searching for.
In his homeland, far in the mountains, he stepped into what he could only describe as a time-portal and landed in a strange land known as Egypt. Then he falls through another portal during a storm, only…
I am an esoteric storyteller. One day a technician was installing our internet. When he found out we were from New Orleans, he told us a story about when he visited there and saw a ghost. To hear him, there was no doubt about his truthfulness, how it scared him and convinced him never to return to that city again. Here was an ordinary guy whose life view was turned upside down by the paranormal. I write about such things—urban fantasies. I include esoteric books as well as accounts of such experiences in my reading. For me, I believe there is much more to this world than meets the eye.
Though this book is divided into different perspectives, the main character is a writer, someone filled with imagination, who often questions his sanity and is being haunted. As a matter of fact, most of the characters in Peter Straub’s book are. But what exactly they are being haunted by becomes the question.
I love Straub’s portrait of the town of Milburn through the eyes of his guilt-ridden protagonists, The Chowder Club, who torture their guilty consciences by telling each other ghost stories. The way Straub time jumps around in this book is dizzying but truly gorgeous. Right at the prologue, I was pulled in as the haunting mystery unfolded, and the question hangs in the air: who and what is the real villain?
#1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub’s classic tale of horror, secrets, and the dangerous ghosts of the past...
What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?
In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories—some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives.
But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury…
I have been interested in time travel since childhood, although I personally do not think human beings will ever move forward or backward in time. But the notion and its paradoxes make a great subject for the imagination, which is the meat of speculative fiction. In writing about time travel, I had to deal with the “grandfather paradox,” where something the character does in the past changes his own future—the core of Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Sound of Thunder.” My excuse, used in The Children of Possibility, is that great upheavals like war and civilizational collapse erase small changes like stepping on a butterfly. But, you know, it’s all speculative.
Heinlein is a master of science fiction. This book is only incidentally—but also irrevocably—about time travel. The life of Lazarus Long, who appears in other works by Heinlein, inspired me to write about longevity in my two-volume novel. Heinlein’s story of adorable Dora will bring tears to your eyes, and it shows how immortality can be a curse if you dare to love someone. Heinlein shares a lot of common sense, too, in the incorporated Notebooks of Lazarus Long.
The capstone and crowning achievement of the Future History series, from the New York Times bestselling Grand Master of Science Fiction...
Time Enough for Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.
I have been interested in time travel since childhood, although I personally do not think human beings will ever move forward or backward in time. But the notion and its paradoxes make a great subject for the imagination, which is the meat of speculative fiction. In writing about time travel, I had to deal with the “grandfather paradox,” where something the character does in the past changes his own future—the core of Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Sound of Thunder.” My excuse, used in The Children of Possibility, is that great upheavals like war and civilizational collapse erase small changes like stepping on a butterfly. But, you know, it’s all speculative.
This three-volume series is not actually about traveling in time. The main characters survive being torpedoed in World War I, are taken aboard the German submarine, and travel to an unknown continent in the South Atlantic where dinosaurs, missing-link humans, and other oddities survive. I mention this book here because I read it as a teenager, long before H.G. Wells’sThe Time Machine,and it gave me a taste for putting modern humans into an earlier time frame—and that is the basis of at least half the time-travel stories.
The Land That Time Forgot opens with the discovery near Greenland of a floating thermos flask containing a manuscript by castaway Tyler Bowen, Jr. The document recounts a series of adventures that starts with a sea battle against a German U-boat and ends on a mysterious island populated by hostile prehistoric animals and people.
The second part of the book, “The People That Time Forgot,” continues the story with the tale of Tom Billings, who has been sent on a mission to rescue Bowen after his manuscript was discovered. He flies solo over the mountainous cliffs that encircle the island…
Romantic & sexy dreams link a false princess to a dangerous, disgraced fae prince in this fun, steamy enemies-to-lovers romantasy. As a royal decoy, trained to replace the Krastel princess even in a political marriage, Astra’s life is not her own. With a duty like that, how can she dream…
I am an esoteric storyteller. One day a technician was installing our internet. When he found out we were from New Orleans, he told us a story about when he visited there and saw a ghost. To hear him, there was no doubt about his truthfulness, how it scared him and convinced him never to return to that city again. Here was an ordinary guy whose life view was turned upside down by the paranormal. I write about such things—urban fantasies. I include esoteric books as well as accounts of such experiences in my reading. For me, I believe there is much more to this world than meets the eye.
I’ve always thought the primary component that drives the perfect paranormal romance is great characters, and I think Nora Roberts kills it in this book. I love the two main characters, Sebastian Donovan, a powerful psychic coming from a family line of similarly gifted individuals, and his nemesis, love interest, private detective Mary Ellen Sutherland. In the grand tradition of hard-boiled detective types, she is skeptical and wants no part of his abilities, until she does.
I love the way Roberts slowly peels away layers of these characters to reveal sensitivities as they find themselves forced to work together to find a kidnapped child. And ultimately, they’re able to teach each other and evolve which I really love about this book.
Nora Roberts is a publishing phenomenon; this New York Times bestselling author of over 200 novels has more than 450 million of her books in print worldwide.
Praise for Nora Roberts
'The most successful novelist on Planet Earth' - Washington Post
'A storyteller of immeasurable diversity and talent' - Publisher's Weekly
I am an esoteric storyteller. One day a technician was installing our internet. When he found out we were from New Orleans, he told us a story about when he visited there and saw a ghost. To hear him, there was no doubt about his truthfulness, how it scared him and convinced him never to return to that city again. Here was an ordinary guy whose life view was turned upside down by the paranormal. I write about such things—urban fantasies. I include esoteric books as well as accounts of such experiences in my reading. For me, I believe there is much more to this world than meets the eye.
This is the only nonfiction book on my list, but this memoir by Shirley MacLaine certainly fits the theme. No one is more of a skeptic than MacLaine about the metaphysical world until she is literally dragged into it via a profound and compelling love affair that drives her to explore the possibilities of past life connections.
I found this book fascinating and loved her accessible style of writing. She is an explorer on a scary new terrain where one discovery links to the next and then to the next. MacLaine stuffs her book full of philosophy and questioning and experiences that left me feeling like I had taken this incredible journey right beside her.
MORE THAN 3 MILLION COPIES IN PRINT • “A stunningly honest, engrossing account . . . Shirley MacLaine’s discovery of a new sense of purpose, joy, energy, and love will touch and astonish you.”—Literary Guild Magazine
An outspoken thinker, a celebrated actress, a truly independent woman, Shirley MacLaine takes us on an intimate yet powerful journey into her personal life and inner self.
An intense, clandestine love affair with a prominent politician sparks Shirley’s quest of self-discovery. From Stockholm to Hawaii to the mountain vastness of Peru, from disbelief to radiant affirmation, she at last discovers the roots of her…
My first toy was a plastic dinosaur, which I took to school and it bears my toothmarks on the tail. As a young teenager, I stumbled across the Dragonriders of Pern books, and my allegiance transferred to dragons. I find them fascinating, both beautiful and dangerous, and prefer books in which they have their own cultures and are strong characters in their own right. The novels I’ve recommended have great world building to draw you into the fascinating lives of dragons, and the humans who come to know them.
What would it be like to become a dragon? Jim Eckert finds out when his consciousness is projected into a medieval fantasy world, and his mind ends up in a dragon. I loved him working out how to convince people like his girlfriend, Angie, who he is and how others join him on his quest to free Angie after she’s been captured.
The dragon rescuing the lady inverts the normal trope and makes the novel great fun to read.
Through no fault of his own, the once human Jim Eckert had become a dragon. Unfortunately, his beloved Angie had remained human. But in this magical land anything could happen. To make matter worse, Angie had been taken prisoner by an evil dragon and was held captive in the impenetrable Loathly Tower. So in this land where humans were edible and beasts were magical--where spells worked and logic didn't--Jim Eckert had a big, strange problem.
Mateo Taurasi and his family fled their island home when their people turned to sorcery. Mateo’s own magic is tame but it’s still banned in the Vaeringan Empire...and his family still use it every day in their cosy teahouse. The last thing they need is an Imperial barging in to…
Psychology, the human condition, and interpersonal relationships fascinate me. I’ve studied the psychology of stories, their effect on readers, and things like moral development to understand better how to structure growth arcs and falls from grace in my writing. However, these studies have also changed the way I consume stories. Through books, movies, and video games, I can’t help but analyze story structure and its impact on its audience. As an author of epic fantasy, I am also active on TikTok and Instagram, reviewing stories and their structures and talking about all things fantasy. I hope you enjoy the stories on this list as much as I have!
This book has this wonderful dichotomy of feeling both fully familiar with other great, classic epic fantasy stories while simultaneously standing proud in its own right.
I tore through this book and this trilogy because they toed the line of nostalgia for classics like Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time while maintaining a more modern voice and more accessible pacing. Any time an author can pack the same degree of epic-ness into a smaller (but by no means small) story, I am all in.
A young man with forbidden magic finds himself drawn into an ancient war against a dangerous enemy in book one of the Licanius Trilogy, the series that fans are heralding as the next Wheel of Time.
As destiny calls, a journey begins.
It has been twenty years since the godlike Augurs were overthrown and killed. Now, those who once served them -- the Gifted -- are spared only because they have accepted the rebellion's Four Tenets, vastly limiting their powers.
As a Gifted, Davian suffers the consequences of a war lost before he was even born. He and others like…
