[issybird]

Nominations:

***The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard [Bookpossum, gmw, Bookworm_Girl]
Kobo US | Amazon US $7.99 for both | Scribd

Spoiler:

Long out of print, Shirley Hazzard's classic novel of love and memory.

A young Englishwoman working in Naples, Jenny comes to Italy fleeing a history that threatened to undo her. Alone in the fabulously ruined city, she idly follows up a letter of introduction from an acquaintance and so changes her life forever. Through the letter, she meets Giocanda, a beautiful and gifted writer, and Gianni, a famous Roman film director and Giocanda’s lover. At work she encounters Justin, a Scotsman whose inscrutability Jenny finds mysteriously attractive. As she becomes increasingly involved in the lives of these three, she discovers that the past--and the patterns of a lifetime--are not easily discarded. (From Goodreads.)

Shirley Hazzard was an Australian born writer, the daughter of diplomats, who among other things worked for British Intelligence in Hong Kong, monitoring civil war in China, and worked for the United Nations Secretariat in New York.

***1632 by Eric Flint [CRussel, Dazrin, June]
Baen - All formats, DRM-Free | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon AU (All free) | Kobo (2nd Edition) $6.99 | Audible $7.49 WhisperSync
553 pages

Spoiler:

This is an alternate history work that transports a coal-mining town from West Virginia to a Germany in the middle of the 30 Years War. This book spawned an entire eco-system of books based on this alternate history, all of them meticulously researched and consistent.

I simply can't recommend this book too highly. Not only does it have some fairly unusual protagonists -- Mike Stearns is the Organizer for the local UMWA chapter and he is by no means the only one -- we'll also learn and appreciate an historical period I knew NOTHING about before this book, the 30 Years War. Because of the level of historical and scientific accuracy and the consistency used throughout all the books in the eco-system, we'll learn a lot while also having a great read. Really, it's a wonderful book!

From Goodreads:

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE -- AMERICAN STYLE 1632 And in northern Germany things couldn't get much worse. Famine. Disease. Religous war laying waste the cities. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy. 2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia, and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time. THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED.... When the dust settles, Mike leads a group of armed miners to find out what happened and finds the road into town is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell: a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter attacked by men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot. At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of the Thirty Years' War.

***Days Without Number by Robert Goddard [gmw, orlok, Bookworm_Girl]
Amazon US $9.99 | Amazon UK £3.99 | Amazon CA CDN$10.99 | Amazon AU AUD$12.99 | Kobo US USD$12.79 | Kobo UK £3.99 | Kobo CA CAD$13.99 | Kobo AU AUD$12.99 | Hoopla | Scribd

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Michael Paleologus, retired archaeologist and supposed descendant of the last Emperors of Byzantium, lives alone in a remote and rambling house in Cornwall. His son, Nicholas, is summoned to resolve a dispute which threatens to set his brothers and sisters against their aged and irascible father. An overly generous offer has been made for the house, but Michael refuses to sell.

Only after the stalemate is tragically broken do Nick and his siblings discover why their father was bound at all costs to reject the offer. Their desperate efforts to conceal the truth drag them into a deadly conflict with an unseen enemy, who seems as determined to force them into a confrontation with their family’s past as he is to conceal his own identity.

Nick realizes that the only way to escape from the trap their persecutor has set for them is to hunt him down, wherever -- and whoever -- he may be. But the hunt involves excavating a terrible secret from their father’s past. And, once that secret is known, nothing will ever be the same again.

Most Goddard books would fit a "time-ly" theme, but this one also fits a "relative" theme - being very much a family affair. Some great family interactions, an intriguing mystery, and Goddard's usual blending of past events into the present. It's an excellent read.

***The Time Machine by H. G. Wells [drofgnal, latepaul, astrangerhere]
PCML: Epub | prc

Spoiler:

From Goodreads.

So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H.G. Wells’s successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth. There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well. Published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.

***1916: The Easter Rising by Tim Pat Coogan [issybird, CRussel, Bookpossum]
Amazon US- $6.99 | Kobo US - $6.99 | Kobo CA - $10.99 | Amazon UK - £6.99 | Kobo UK - £6.99 | Kobo AU - $12.99

Spoiler:

The Easter Rising began at 12 noon, 24 April, 1916 and lasted for six short but bloody days, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians, the destruction of many parts of Dublin, and the true beginning of Irish independence. The 1916 Rising was born out of the Conservative and Unionist parties' illegal defiance of the democratically expressed wish of the Irish electorate for Home Rule; and of confusion, mishap and disorganisation, compounded by a split within the Volunteer leadership. Tim Pat Coogan introduces the major players, themes and outcomes of a drama that would profoundly affect twentieth-century Irish history.

***The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde [JSWolf, orlok, Alohamora]
Overdrive | Scribd | Kobo UK | Kobo US | Kobo CA | Kobo AU | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU | Google Play US

Spoiler:

Fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it’s a bibliophile’s dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy—enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel—unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix. Thursday’s zany investigations continue with six more bestselling Thursday Next novels,

And read this short review. It might help you decide to give it a go. https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho..._review_page=1

*The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer [Catlady]
Amazon U.S. $8.74 | Kobo U.S. $8.74 | Google Play $8.74 | Amazon Canada $11.99 | Kobo Canada $11.99 | Amazon Australia $5.18 | Kobo Australia $7.25 | Amazon UK £3.99 | Kobo UK £4.07

Spoiler:

From the critically acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli comes The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, a rapturously romantic story of a woman who finds herself transported to the “other lives” she might have lived.

After the death of her beloved twin brother and the abandonment of her long-time lover, Greta Wells undergoes electroshock therapy. Over the course of the treatment, Greta finds herself repeatedly sent to 1918, 1941, and back to the present. Whisked from the gas-lit streets and horse-drawn carriages of the West Village to a martini-fueled lunch at the Oak Room, in these other worlds, Greta finds her brother alive and well* though fearfully masking his true personality. And her former lover is now her devoted husband…but will he be unfaithful to her in this life as well? Greta Wells is fascinated by her alter egos: in 1941, she is a devoted mother; in 1918, she is a bohemian adulteress.

In this spellbinding novel by Andrew Sean Greer, each reality has its own losses, its own rewards; each extracts a different price. Which life will she choose as she wrestles with the unpredictability of love and the consequences of even her most carefully considered choices?

***The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North [Bookworm_Girl, latepaul, gmw]
Amazon US | Kobo US - $9.99 | Available as an ebook in Australia, Canada and UK | Overdrive, Cloud (previously 3M) and Axis 360 Libraries and Scribd as an audiobook.

Spoiler:

Because the Goodreads description is rather vague, I've copied a starred review from Booklist instead.

Harry August isn’t human. Well, that’s not quite accurate. He is human but a different sort of human from the rest of us: he was born (in the ladies’ washroom of a train station in England in 1919), he lives a certain number of years, and he dies—and then he’s born again, right back where he started, and a handful of years later his memories of his first life return. Harry is, like a few others, a kalachakra, an immortal who is constantly reborn, each time with all the memories of his previous lives. This wonderful novel, narrated by Harry, ranges back and forth in time as he recounts episodes from his various lives, but it’s all held together by a compelling mystery involving nothing less than the end of the world itself (a thousand years in the future).

From Wikipedia:

The Wheel of time or wheel of history (also known as Kalachakra) is a concept found in several religious traditions and philosophies, notably religions of Indian origin such as Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, which regard time as cyclical and consisting of repeating ages. Many other cultures contain belief in a similar concept: notably, the Q'ero Indians in Peru, as well as the Hopi Indians of Arizona.

***Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy by Norman Lewis [issybird, drofgnal, Dazrin]
Amazon US $7.99 | Kobo US $8.69 | Amazon UK £5.69 | Kobo UK £6.47 | Kobo AU $10.88 | Amazon AU $9.49

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

As a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, Naples '44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to provide basic necessities to the populace while Neapolitan citizens accuse each other of being Nazi spies, women offer their bodies to the same Allied soldiers whose supplies they steal for sale on the black market, and angry young men organize militias to oppose "temporary" foreign rule. Yet over the chaotic din, Lewis sings intimately of the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, whose traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit shine through daily. This essential World War II book is as timely a read as ever.

***Their Finest, by Lissa Evans [Catlady, issybird, CRussel]
Amazon U.S. $1.99 | Kobo U.S. $9.99 | Google Play U.S. $9.99 | Amazon UK £1.99 | Kobo UK £1.99 | Amazon Canada $1.99 | Kobo Canada $1.99 | Amazon Australia $10.99 | Kobo Australia $10.99 | Overdrive | Scribd

Spoiler:

From the author of the acclaimed Crooked Heart comes another “smart, funny, ingenious, revealing tale of London life during the Second World War” (The Independent)—longlisted for the Orange Prize upon its original publication in England.

It is 1940. France has fallen, and only a narrow strip of sea lies between Great Britain and invasion. The war could go either way and everyone must do their bit. Young copy writer Catrin Cole is drafted into the Ministry of Information to help “write women” into propaganda films—something that the men aren’t very good at.

She is quickly seconded to the Ministry’s latest endeavor: a heart-warming tale of bravery and rescue at Dunkirk. It’s all completely fabricated, of course, but what does that matter when the nation’s morale is at stake? Since call-up has stripped the industry of its brightest and best, it is the callow, the jaded and the utterly unsuitable who must make up the numbers: Ambrose Hilliard, third most popular British film-star of 1924; Edith Beadmore, Madame Tussauds wardrobe assistant turned costumier; and Arthur Frith, whose peacetime job as a catering manager has not really prepared him for his sudden, unexpected elevation to Special Military Advisor.

Now in a serious world, in a nation under siege, they must all swallow their mutual distaste, ill-will, and mistrust to unite for the common good, for King and Country, and—in one case—for better or worse....

“Evans displays a fine eye for detail and for the absurdities involved in filming. She also brilliantly evokes the disruption and dangers of wartime London. This funny, heart-warming and beautifully crafted novel is a must-read.”—Daily Mail (London)

***Making History by Stephen Fry [JSWolf, Alohamora, Bookpossum]
Overdrive | RBdigital | Kobo UK | Kobo US | Kobo CA | Kobo AU | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon AU

Spoiler:

Stephen Fry tackles alternate history, asking: What if Hitler had never been born?

Michael Young is a graduate student at Cambridge who is completing his dissertation on the early life of Adolf Hitler. Leo Zuckerman is an aging German physicist and Holocaust survivor. Together they idealistically embark on an experiment to change the course of history. And with their success is launched a brave new world that is in some ways better than ours—but in most ways even worse.

***All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai [JSWolf, latepaul, GreyWolfsGhost]
Overdrive | Scribd | RBdigital audiobook | RBdigital eBook | Amazon AU | Amazon CA | | Amazon US | Kobo AU | Kobo CA | Kobo UK | Kobo US

Spoiler:

Elan Mastai's acclaimed debut novel is a story of friendship and family, of unexpected journeys and alternate paths, and of love in its multitude of forms.

It's 2016, and in Tom Barren's world, technology has solved all of humanity's problems—there's no war, no poverty, no under-ripe avocadoes. Unfortunately, Tom isn't happy. He's lost the girl of his dreams. And what do you do when you're heartbroken and have a time machine? Something stupid.

Finding himself stranded in a terrible alternate reality—which we immediately recognize as our 2016—Tom is desperate to fix his mistake and go home. Right up until the moment he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and the woman who may just be the love of his life.

Now Tom faces an impossible choice. Go back to his perfect but loveless life. Or stay in our messy reality with a soulmate by his side. His search for the answer takes him across continents and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be.

Filled with humor and heart and packed with insight, intelligence, and mind-bending invention, All Our Wrong Todays is a powerful and moving story of life, loss, and love.

***Time and Again by Jack Finney [orlok, Alohamora, Dazrin]
Amazon UK | Kobo UK | Amazon US | Kobo US | Amazon CAN | Kobo CAN | Amazon AUS | Kobo AUS

Spoiler:

One of the most beloved tales of our time!
Science fiction, mystery, a passionate love story, and a detailed history of Old New York blend together in Jack Finney's spellbinding story of a young man enlisted in a secret Government experiment.
Transported from the mid-twentieth century to New York City in the year 1882, Si Morley walks the fashionable "Ladies' Mile" of Broadway, is enchanted by the jingling sleigh bells in Central Park, and solves a 20th-century mystery by discovering its 19th-century roots. Falling in love with a beautiful young woman, he ultimately finds himself forced to choose between his lives in the present and the past.
A story that will remain in the reader's memory, "Time and Again" is a remarkable blending of the troubled present and a nostalgic past, made vivid and extraordinarily moving by the images of a time that was...and perhaps still is.
--Goodreads