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From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel...

Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest.I LOVE DOGS!I LOVE DOGS!He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump.I LOVE DOGS!I LOVE DOGS!It's part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier.I LOVE DOGS!I LOVE DOGS!

But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past.I LOVE DOGS!I LOVE DOGS!Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right--not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself.I LOVE DOGS!I LOVE DOGS!
Customer Review: A joy to read
A few years ago, my husband and I began reading out loud to each other in the evenings. There are not many books that can stand the consistent pressure on the language that such readings aloud entail, and I was skeptical when he put Connie Willis's novel--science fiction!--on our list. We've now read it aloud twice, the second time as a comfort read when I was sick. The only difficulties occurred when we were so convulsed with laughter we couldn't go on. This is a novel we recommend to our writer and avid reader friends, and also to those who read no more than a couple of books a year. We give it as gifts. We adore it. Here's why: such simple graceful prose that the craft that underlies it is almost invisible; deft plotting; characters one cares about; and sparkling irreverent humor. Part time-travel novel, part Victorian romance, and part mystery (and playing with and defying the conventions of all of these), this novel is a joyous romp. It's the sort of book that makes you remember how much fun children's books were, when you were a child. It has no pretentions to greatness, and is unlikely to show up on anyone's list of the great novels of the 20th century . . . though perhaps it should. Underneath the comic story is a more subtle exploration of the meaning of fate, coincidence, and time that never gets in the way of the fun. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Customer Review: To say everything about the author
With apologies to Jerome K. Jerome, Robert Heinlein and the Marx Brothers, this is a unique book. It is a victorian drawing room comedy, a time-travel tech, a love story, a mystery, and a locked-door who-dun-it. Like a Marx Brothers movie, the plot is too intricate, and half of it makes no sense until you've read half the book, so I won't even try to summarize it here. Needless to say it's interesting, though after a while I found some of it hard to follow (I kept loosing track of the character's relationships to each other) because so much was going on. But all that was missing was a little shakesperean crossdressing, and people running in and out of doors. It's just a very happy book to read, and I do have to say that I even liked the dog (but I won't say anything about the cat).


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