First published 2010
Oxford's time travel lab in 2060 runs like clockwork until everything goes wrong at once. Michael Davies prepares for Pearl Harbor while Merope Ward handles difficult evacuee children in 1940, hoping to convince her adviser to let her witness VE-Day. Polly Churchill gets ready to work as a shopgirl during the London Blitz. Then the lab starts canceling missions and reshuffling schedules without explanation. When the three historians finally reach World War II, they face more than air raids and blackouts. The time travel technology begins malfunctioning in dangerous ways. Michael, Merope, and Polly find themselves questioning everything they learned about temporal mechanics. The fundamental rule that historians cannot alter the past suddenly seems less certain. As dive-bombing Stukas attack and the war rages around them, they must confront a terrifying possibility: history itself might be spinning out of control.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, 21st-century, alternate-history, academic
Vibes: fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, time-travel
Setting: Oxford, London, Pearl Harbor
Period: 1940, 2060, VE-Day
491 pages · Hardcover · Spectra