First published 2012
H.G. Wells finds himself hired to investigate Murray's Temporal Travel Company, a business claiming to offer genuine journeys through time in 1896 London. The skeptical author must solve three interconnected cases: saving an aristocrat desperate to rescue his murdered prostitute lover from the past, helping a woman escape Victorian society's constraints, and protecting his own wife from a fourth-dimensional conspiracy. Someone is targeting the authors of Dracula, The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds, planning to steal their identities and claim their literary works. Wells navigates a web of real and fictional characters as the investigation reveals that changing history might carry dangerous consequences. The three storylines converge around questions of love, adventure, and the very nature of time itself.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, mystery, 19th-century, alternate-history
Vibes: atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: alternate-history, time-travel
Setting: London, Victorian
Period: 1896
451 pages · Kindle Edition · Atria Books