Let’s Do the Time Warp Again: 11 Books to Celebrate Daylight Saving Time

Georgie McCool knows her marriage to Neal is in trouble. Two days before Christmas, she tells him that she won’t be joining him and their children at his parents’ place, and prepares herself for the inevitable end of their relationship. That night, however, she picks up the phone and hears Neal on the other end—except it’s Neal from the past, before they got married. She feels like it’s an opportunity to fix things before they even start, but what if it’s really a chance to avoid heartbreak?

When advertising artist Si Morley is offered the chance to join a secret government group exploring the possibility of time travel, he jumps at the chance to leave his twentieth-century life and explore 1880s New York; he also has a mystery to solve involving a half-burned letter from the same year. As he travels along Broadway and through Central Park, he falls in love and must make a decision between two worlds—and two lives.

The first time that Ursula Todd is born, she dies. From there, she is born again—and dies again—in any number of ways, each time surviving a bit longer and watching more of the twentieth century unfold before her eyes. As she inches closer and closer toward her destiny, decisions are made that have the potential to change her life—and the world.

David Mitchell is known for playing with time, and THE BONE CLOCKS continues that tradition. Fifteen year-old Holly Sykes gets into a fight with her mother and slams the door—literally—on her old life. A lightning rod for psychic phenomena, Holly finds herself deep in the English countryside and in the path of a dangerous cabal that will affect her life, and the lives of everyone she knows (including those not yet born).

Clare knows that Henry is her soul mate, but Henry has a rare chromosomal condition that shifts his genetic clock without warning. This throws him back to random points in his past, present, and future, but always brings him back to Clare. Though their love story is unconventional, it is also unconditional and unforgettable.

In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is on a second honeymoon with her husband when she walks through an ancient standing stone and finds herself in 1743. Suddenly, she is an “outlander,” held back in time by forces she cannot understand. And then she meets James Fraser, a young warrior who she feels inexplicably drawn to. Torn between fidelity, time, and desire, Claire must find a way to choose the life she wants.

We’ve all asked ourselves, at some point, the same question: how would I change things if I could go back in time? Jake Epping is a 35-year-old high school English teacher in Maine when he discovers a portal to 1958 and is given the chance to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As he travels back and forth, tracking Lee Harvey Oswald and falling in love with a beautiful young librarian, Jake contemplates changing the face of history—but what are the consequences?

The first published sci-fi novel written by a black woman, KINDRED is a classic, a combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction that cannot be missed. Dana, a 26-year-old African-American woman living in 1970s California, is suddenly and inexplicably sent through time to antebellum Delaware, where she saves a white child’s life, is almost killed for her bravery, and just as suddenly is transported back to the present. It happens over and over again, until she realizes that it’s happening for a reason: the child is her great-great-grandfather, and he must exist so she does too.

On July 15, 1988, Dex and Emma meet and spend one day together. It’s not a lot of time, but it completely changes their lives, and David Nicholls’s novel follows their ever-changing relationship over the next twenty July 15s. As they grow apart, come back together, fight, hope, and miss one another, they must come to grips with the nature of love, friendship, and life itself. Keep tissues nearby!

Jeff Winston is 43, trapped in a marriage and job he didn’t want, when he dies. Except he wakes up again, this time 18 years old, and somehow with all of his memories intact. He is able to live his life over again, without the mistakes and regrets and with knowledge that could earn him money and happiness. Until he dies again 43 and wakes up again in a Groundhog Day–like tale that will keep the pages turning.

A modern classic, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE follows Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens and is brought back through all the phases of his life, namely the period he spent as a prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. Filled with imagination, tragedy, and profound insight into the human condition, this novel is a must-read, if you haven’t already.