Time Travel Fans

Take a trip through time with these time travel stories:

• The 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch - A tale told in reverse finds an innocent man sitting in jail after being accused of his wife's murder and given an opportunity by a gray-haired stranger to go back in time on an hour-by-hour basis to discover what happened, an opportunity that poses a painful dilemma.
• The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer - To alleviate her suffocating depression after the death of her twin brother and the break-up with her long-time lover, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment that has an unexpected side effect, which transports her to the lives she might have had if she had been born in a different era.
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King - Receiving a horrific essay from a GED student with a traumatic past, high-school English teacher Jake Epping is enlisted by a friend to travel back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a mission for which he must reacclimate to 1960s culture and befriend troubled loner Lee Harvey Oswald.
• The Company of the Dead by David Kowelski - March 1912. A mysterious man appears aboard the Titanic on its doomed voyage. His mission? To save the ship. The result? A world where the United States never entered World War I, thus launching the secret history of the 20th Century. Joseph Kennedy, grand-nephew to the president, is one of the six people who can set history to its rightful order, even if it means his non-existence.
• Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan - Upon learning that he is terminally ill, Ellis, a man who has always played it safe, decides to throw caution to the wind and use the time machine he has constructed in his garage.
• Blackout by Connie Willis - Stranded in the past during World War II, three researchers from the future investigate period behavior and seek each other out in a shared effort to return to their own time.

Looking for more? Ask one of our reference librarians for recommendations.

World War I Picks

In honor of this month's 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, we have put together a display on the main floor filled with books (and movies) about this monumental war including:



For more information and books about World War I, stop by the display on our main floor and speak to our reference librarians at the information desk.

China Dolls by Lisa See

"It’s 1938 in San Francisco: a world’s fair is preparing to open on Treasure Island, a war is brewing overseas, and the city is alive with possibilities. Grace, Helen, and Ruby, three young women from very different backgrounds, meet by chance at the exclusive and glamorous Forbidden City nightclub. Grace Lee, an American-born Chinese girl, has fled the Midwest with nothing but heartache, talent, and a pair of dancing shoes. Helen Fong lives with her extended family in Chinatown, where her traditional parents insist that she guard her reputation like a piece of jade. The stunning Ruby Tom challenges the boundaries of convention at every turn with her defiant attitude and no-holds-barred ambition.

The girls become fast friends, relying on one another through unexpected challenges and shifting fortunes. When their dark secrets are exposed and the invisible thread of fate binds them even tighter, they find the strength and resilience to reach for their dreams. But after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, paranoia and suspicion threaten to destroy their lives, and a shocking act of betrayal changes everything." (Publisher's Summary)

New Historical Fiction Masterpiece

"A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned, Doerr's magnificently drawn story seems at once spacious and tightly composed." - Booklist (Starred Review)

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr took 10 years to write and now that it is published the reviews overwhelmingly exclaim this as a book not to be missed. Be sure to place a hold on it today!

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. At age six, she goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. At age twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

"If a book's success can be measured by its ability to move readers and the number of memorable characters it has, Story Prize–winner Doerr's novel triumphs on both counts." - Publisher's Weekly

“[All the Light We Cannot See] has the physical and emotional heft of a masterpiece...the novel presents two characters so interesting and sympathetic that readers will keep turning the pages hoping for an impossibly happy ending...highly recommended for fans of Michael Ondaatje's similarly haunting The English Patient." - Library Journal

A Star for Mrs. Blake

The United States Congress in 1929 passed legislation to fund travel for mothers of the fallen soldiers of World War I to visit their sons’ graves in France. Over the next three years, 6,693 Gold Star Mothers made the trip. In A Star for Mrs. Blake, April Smith (author of the Ana Grey mystery series) breathes life into a unique moment in American history, imagining the experience of five of these women.

They are strangers at the start, but their lives will become inextricably intertwined, altered in indelible ways. These very different Gold Star Mothers (an Irish maid, a chicken farmer's wife, a Boston socialite, a former tennis star and a librarian) travel to the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery to say final good-byes to their sons and come together along the way to face the unexpected: a death, a scandal, and a secret revealed.