In her first novel since 2002, Nebula and Hugo awardwinning author Connie Willis returns with a stunning, enormously entertaining novel of time travel, war, and the deeds great and small of ordinary people who shape history.

Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of timetraveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE Day. Polly Churchill's next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London's Blitz. And 17yearold Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can catch up to her in age. But now the timetravel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason and switching around everyones schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, divebombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the oncereliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.

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