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Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Curated reading orders carry their reasoning on the page; the rest follow publication order. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Taking Time

anchored on:time travelour worldcontemporary

but

Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

  • The reading experience is propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical risk; excitement and forward momentum dominate over dread or introspection.
  • Joy and loss are deliberately mixed; the resolution grants characters something real while taking something else away, leaving warmth and sorrow together.
  • The book demands work from the reader — dense prose, difficult structure, unfamiliar ideas, or morally uncomfortable material — as part of its intended effect.
  • Grim events, cruelty, or despair dominate the atmosphere, and the book does not soften them with comfort or comic relief.
  • The atmosphere is quietly unsettling — wrongness, unease, and the uncanny pervade the book without necessarily escalating into overt horror.
  • The book is built to move the reader; character feeling is foregrounded and major scenes aim at a strong emotional response.
  • Humor is a primary aim and the prose plays for laughs — comic situations, wit, or dialogue produce sustained comedy, not occasional levity.
  • The book insists that things can improve; effort and decency are shown to matter, and the arc bends toward better outcomes even through hardship.
  • The book teaches as it goes — real facts, history, science, or craft are conveyed in enough depth that learning is part of the reading experience.
  • The book is designed to uplift and motivate, presenting perseverance or achievement in a way that invites the reader to aspire or act.
  • The overall register is cheerful and easygoing; stakes are kept gentle and the book avoids dwelling on pain or dread.
  • Withheld information drives the experience; the book sustains enigmas and secrets the reader wants resolved, whatever its genre.
  • The book is contemplative and inward-looking, giving more weight to thought, memory, and meaning than to external events.
  • The book works as comfort reading — low tension, a soothing pace, and an atmosphere the reader can unwind in.
  • Grief, loss, or melancholy set the dominant register, and the book lets sorrow stand rather than resolving it into comfort.
  • Sustained suspense is the point; the book keeps the reader braced for what happens next through danger, pressure, or impending revelation.
  • Playful invention and charm define the register — fanciful conceits, light absurdity, and a narration that delights in its own oddity.

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories about venturing into space to explore — survey missions, astronauts, and the frontier of the unknown beyond Earth.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories in which a friendship — its making, testing, or loss — is the emotional center.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories about mourning — living through the death of a loved one and what loss does to the survivors.
  • Stories in which a buried family truth — hidden parentage, crimes, or shames — surfaces and reorders the present.
  • Stories driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories in which war itself is the subject — combat, occupation, and what warfare does to soldiers and civilians.
  • Stories organized around investigating a killing — the case, the clues, and the pursuit of the killer, in any genre's clothing.

Shelf

Where it sits in the library.

    • Fiction built on magic or other supernatural elements that have no scientific explanation.
    • Secondary-world fantasy at large scale, where the fate of nations or the world turns on the protagonists' struggle.
    • Fantasy set in a recognizably modern city or contemporary world where the supernatural intrudes on everyday life.
    • Fantasy that blends in horror's atmosphere and imagery, keeping a fantastical frame around grim or frightening material.
    • Action-driven fantasy following warriors or rogues with personal stakes against sorcerous threats, rather than world-spanning conflicts.
    • Fantasy set in a real historical period or a close analogue of one, with magic woven into the era.
    • Fantasy in which protagonists cross from the ordinary world into another world through a portal or similar passage.
    • Fiction that retells or reworks a traditional fairy tale in a new form or setting.
    • Fantasy drawing directly on myths, legends, and folklore, retelling them or building on their figures and logic.
    • Fantasy of ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, and similar phenomena, usually set in an otherwise ordinary world.
    • Fiction mixing science-fictional trappings with overtly magical or impossible elements in one setting.
    • Low-stakes fantasy emphasizing comfort, community, and everyday pleasures over conflict and peril.
    • Speculative fiction of pervasive moral ambiguity, violence, and cynicism that rejects heroic conventions — fantasy and SF alike.
      • Fiction that extrapolates from science and technology — future societies, space travel, or speculative inventions — within at least nominally natural laws.
      • Science fiction of interstellar scope — starships, galactic polities, and adventure across star systems.
      • Science fiction committed to scientific rigor, where technical plausibility constrains the story.
      • Science fiction centered on armed forces and warfare, told largely from a military point of view.
      • Science fiction of networked, corporate-dominated near futures, pairing high technology with social decay.
      • Science fiction styled on nineteenth-century steam-powered technology, often in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting.
      • Fiction depicting an oppressive or catastrophic society, presented as a warning.
      • Fiction set after civilization's collapse, following survivors in the ruins of the old world.
      • Fiction in which characters move between past and future, and the mechanics or consequences of that travel drive the plot.
      • Fiction exploring a world where a historical event went differently and history diverged from ours.
      • Science fiction about humanity's first encounter and communication with an alien intelligence.
      • Science fiction in which extraterrestrial forces attack or occupy Earth and humanity resists.
      • Fiction whose primary aim is to frighten or unsettle the reader through dread, menace, or the monstrous.
      • Horror of vast, indifferent, incomprehensible entities before which humanity is insignificant, in the Lovecraft tradition.
      • Horror of decaying houses, buried family secrets, and oppressive atmosphere in the Gothic literary tradition.
      • Horror centered on hauntings and the returning dead.
      • Horror located in the mind — paranoia, obsession, and unreliable perception rather than external monsters.
      • Horror built around the reanimated dead and survival amid their outbreaks.
      • Horror defined by explicit, transgressive gore that refuses to cut away from violence.
      • Speculative fiction of the strange and uncanny that resists both natural explanation and standard genre categories.
      • Fiction organized around solving a crime or puzzle, typically following an investigator toward the identification of a culprit.
      • A puzzle-first mystery that lays out clues so the culprit's identity can be deduced before the reveal.
      • Crime fiction of moral ambiguity, fatalism, and hard-edged style, set among the corrupt and the doomed.
      • A mystery following the realistic routines of police work — forensics, interviews, and case-building.
      • A gentle mystery with an amateur sleuth, a small community, and violence kept off the page.
      • A mystery set in a past era, where the investigation works within that period's methods and society.
      • Fast-paced fiction driven by imminent danger, pursuit, or high-stakes conspiracy, built to sustain tension.
      • A thriller of espionage — agents, tradecraft, and intelligence services in conflict.
      • A thriller centered on lawyers and the courtroom, where litigation carries the suspense.
      • A thriller driven by detailed contemporary or near-future technology, often military or scientific.
      • A thriller whose tension comes from mental states and manipulation between characters rather than external action.
      • Fiction whose central plot is a romantic relationship and its development toward an emotionally satisfying resolution.
      • Romance in which one or both partners are supernatural beings, blending fantasy elements into the love story.
      • A fantasy-romance hybrid in which the romantic arc and the fantasy plot carry equal weight.
      • Romance set in a past era, with courtship shaped by the period's society and manners.
      • Romance set in the present day, without supernatural or historical elements.
      • Fiction set in a real past period, where the historical setting materially shapes characters and events.
        • General and literary fiction emphasizing prose style, character interiority, or formal ambition over genre plot conventions.
        • Fiction in a realistic world where magical events occur and are treated as ordinary, in the tradition of Latin American literature.
        • Fiction that ridicules people, institutions, or society in order to criticize them.
        • Fiction of dreamlike, irrational imagery and logic that breaks from realistic representation.
        • Fiction that plays with narrative convention through metafiction, fragmentation, and self-reference.
        • Fiction propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical peril, where action and survival carry the plot.
        • Adventure fiction of ships and seafaring — naval engagements, voyages, and life at sea.
        • Fiction of the American frontier West — gunmen, ranchers, and lawmen, typically in the late nineteenth century.
        • Fiction centered on soldiers, campaigns, and the experience of warfare, historical or imagined.
          • Fiction written primarily to amuse, using comedic situations, wit, or parody as its organizing principle.
            • Multi-generational fiction following a family or dynasty across decades, with inheritance and kinship as the through-line.
              • Fiction whose world runs on explicit game mechanics — levels, stats, and skills that characters can see and exploit.
                • Fiction about costumed or superpowered heroes and their conflicts with comparable villains.

                Practical

                How long a commitment, whether it stands alone, and whether it has finished.

                Tap a chip to ask for it · tap again to rule it out · once more to clear. Numbers show what would be left.

                • Cover of The Accidental Time Machine
                  The Accidental Time Machine

                  Joe Haldeman · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bytime travelour worldcontemporaryscience fiction+1 more

                  "Grad-school dropout Matt Fuller is toiling as a lowly research assistant at MIT when, while measuring subtle quantum forces that relate to time changes in gravity and electromagnetic force, his calibrator turns into a time machine. With a dead-end job and a girlfriend who has left him for another man, Matt has nothing to lose taking a time machine trip himself - or so he thinks."

                • Cover of Replay
                  Replay

                  Ken Grimwood · standalone novel · 1987

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelour worldscience fiction

                  Replay is a fantasy novel by American writer Ken Grimwood, first published by Arbor House in 1987. It won the 1988 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

                • Cover of The Seven Year Slip
                  The Seven Year Slip

                  Ashley Poston · standalone novel · 2023

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelour worldcontemporary

                  Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it. So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it. And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again. Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future. Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed. After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.

                • Cover of All This and More
                  All This and More

                  Peng Shepherd · standalone novel · 2024

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelour worldcontemporaryscience fiction

                  A game show uses a technology that allows contestants to revise their past lives to change their present ones.

                • Cover of Gimme a Call
                  Gimme a Call

                  Sarah Mlynowski · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelour worldcontemporary

                  Devi Banks can suddenly talk to her future self - via her mobile! She can stop her younger self falling for the boy who just broke her heart. But is changing the past really that easy?

                • Cover of Landline
                  Landline

                  Rainbow Rowell · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelcontemporaryscience fiction

                  Landline is a 2014 American sci-fi novel by Rainbow Rowell. It tells the story of 37-year-old Georgie McCool who discovers that she is able to call her husband's 22-year-old self through his landline. Rowell stated that aspects from the novel are loosely based on her own life such as the fact that Georgie is incredibly career-driven while her husband is a stay-at-home dad. The character of Georgie McCool was named after the song Georgy Girl and the village of McCool Junction.

                • Cover of All Our Wrong Todays
                  All Our Wrong Todays

                  Elan Mastai · standalone novel · 2017

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelcontemporaryscience fiction

                  All Our Wrong Todays is a 2017 science fiction novel by Canadian screenwriter Elan Mastai. It is Mastai's debut novel and was first published in February 2017 in the United States by Dutton, in Canada by Doubleday Canada, and in the United Kingdom in March 2017 by Michael Joseph. The novel is about a man from a utopia in an alternate reality who finds himself stuck in our reality after a time travel accident.

                • Cover of Erased
                  Erased

                  Christopher Coates · standalone novel · 2025

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelour worldcontemporaryscience fiction

                  ● "They built a time machine to fix the past, but never imagined it would break their future. Marcy and Connor's first journey through time was a triumph: they saved a life and righted a terrible wrong. Soon, they turned their sights to rewriting entire chapters of human history. What began as a crusade to eliminate evil becomes a spiral of unintended consequences, as each return to the present reveals a world further away from the one they once knew. As time fractures, they race against time to repair what they've done. With every jump, the present and future change in unpredictable ways. Can they ever return things to the way they were before―or find a reality they can call home?" ― quoted from this book's Amazon product page as 2026-05-02.

                • Cover of The Midnight World
                  The Midnight World

                  series · 2 books · 2020

                  similar bysecond chancecontemporary+2 more

                • Cover of Counter Clockwise
                  Counter Clockwise

                  Jason Cockcroft · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelour worldcontemporary

                  Young-adult fantasy time-travel novel. Nathan's widower father goes back in time to prevent his wife's death.

                • Cover of The Time Traveler's Wife
                  The Time Traveler's Wife

                  Audrey Niffenegger · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar bytime travelour worldcontemporaryscience fiction

                  The Time Traveler's Wife is the debut novel by American author Audrey Niffenegger, published in 2003. It is a love story about Henry, a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably, and about Clare, his wife, an artist who has to cope with his frequent absences. Niffenegger, who was frustrated with love when she began the novel, wrote the story as a metaphor for her failed relationships. The tale's central relationship came to Niffenegger suddenly and subsequently supplied the novel's title. The novel has been classified as both science fiction and romance.

                • Cover of Job: A Comedy of Justice
                  Job: A Comedy of Justice

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1984

                  similar bycontemporaryour worldscience fiction+1 more

                  Job: A Comedy of Justice is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein published in 1984. The title is a reference to the biblical Book of Job and James Branch Cabell's book Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice. It won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 1985 and was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1984, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1985.

                • Cover of The Time Keeper
                  The Time Keeper

                  Mitch Albom · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar bysecond chanceour worldcontemporary

                  The Time Keeper--a compelling fable about the first man on earth to count the hours. The man who became Father Time. In Mitch Albom's newest work of fiction, the inventor of the world's first clock is punished for trying to measure God's greatest gift. He is banished to a cave for centuries and forced to listen to the voices of all who come after him seeking more days, more years. Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with a magical hourglass and a mission: a chance to redeem himself by teaching two earthly people the true meaning of time. He returns to our world--now dominated by the hour-counting he so innocently began--and commences a journey with two unlikely partners: one a teenage girl who is about to give up on life, the other a wealthy old businessman who wants to live forever. To save himself, he must save them both. And stop the world to do so.

                • Cover of Home in Time for Christmas
                  Home in Time for Christmas

                  Heather Graham · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar bytime travelcontemporary+1 more

                  Melody Tarleton is driving home for Christmas when a man—clad in Revolutionary War-era costume—appears right in the path of her car. Shaken, she takes the injured stranger in, listening with concern to Jake Mallory's fantastic claim that he's a Patriot soldier, sentenced to death by British authorities. The last thing he remembers is the tug of the noose.Safe at her parents' house, Melody concocts a story to explain the handsome guest with courtly manners, strange clothes and bump on the head. Mark, her close friend who wishes he were more, is skeptical and her family is fascinated—though not half so fascinated as Melody herself. Jake is passionate, charming and unlike anyone she's ever met. Can he really be who he claims? And can a man from the past be the future she longs for?With the aid of enchanted petals, ancient potions and the magic of the season, Melody and Jake embark on an unimaginable Christmas adventure—and discover a love that transcends time.

                • Cover of Time at the Top
                  Time at the Top

                  series · 2 books · 1963

                  completed

                  similar bytime travel+3 more

                • Cover of Bewitched
                  Bewitched

                  Constance O'Day-Flannery · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelour worldcontemporary

                  Primarily a romance with a time travel angle.

                • Cover of Lost Lake
                  Lost Lake

                  Sarah Addison Allen · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bysecond chanceour worldcontemporary

                  Lost Lake is a light fantasy novel written in 2014 by Sarah Addison Allen. It was written during the author’s bout with advanced stage cancer.

                • Cover of The Dead Romantics
                  The Dead Romantics

                  Ashley Poston · standalone novel · 2022

                  similar byour worldcontemporary+1 more

                • Cover of The Post-Birthday World
                  The Post-Birthday World

                  Lionel Shriver · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bysecond chanceour worldcontemporary

                  The Post-Birthday World is a novel by Lionel Shriver published in 2007, four years after her previous novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin.

                • Cover of Time Travelers Never Die
                  Time Travelers Never Die

                  series · 2 books · 1996

                  similar bytime travelour worldcontemporaryscience fiction

                  Time Travelers Never Die started life as a Jack McDevitt novella in the mid-1990s (Hugo- and Nebula-nominated) before he expanded it into a full novel over a decade later; the novella and novel are two forms of the same story rather than a sequel. It follows a small circle of people who gain access to working time travel and use it to step into the past, in McDevitt's characteristic register of curious, history-minded science fiction.

                • Cover of A Bridge of Years
                  A Bridge of Years

                  Robert Charles Wilson · standalone novel · 1991

                  similar bysecond chancetime travelscience fiction+1 more

                  "Tom Winter thought the secluded cottage in the Pacific Northwest would be the perfect refuge--a place to nurse the wounds of lost love and happiness. But Tom soon discovers that his safe haven is the portal of a tunnel through time. At one end is the present. At the other end--New York City, 1963. His journey back to the early 1960s seems to offer him the chance to start over in a simpler, safer world. But he finds that the tunnel holds a danger far greater than anything he left behind: a human killing machine escaped from a bleak and brutal future, who will do anything to protect the secret passage that he thought was his alone. To preserve his worlds, past and present, Tom Winter must face the terrors of an unknown world to come. "--

                • Cover of Heaven on Earth
                  Heaven on Earth

                  Constance O'Day-Flannery · standalone novel · 2000

                  similar byour worldcontemporary+2 more

                • Cover of The Resurrection Wager
                  The Resurrection Wager

                  Christopher Coates · standalone novel · 2018

                  similar bytime travelour worldcontemporaryscience fiction

                  • "When a man of science and a man of faith develop the ability to go back in time, there is only one place for them to go to demonstrate their new technology. After they make a wager about whether or not the resurrection of Jesus really happened, the two set out to prove it one way or the other. Along the way, they face obstacles and challenges from those who want to use their technology for personal gain." ― quoted from this book's product page on Goodreads.com as of 2020-05-28.

                • Cover of Somewhere in Time
                  Somewhere in Time

                  Merline Lovelace · standalone novel · 1994

                  similar bytime travelour world+1 more