Past, Present, and Everything in Between
10 Books with Multiple Timelines
Few things are as captivating as a fictional story told through multiple points of view or timelines. When the narrative sweeps a reader away—as every book lover hopes—it becomes impossible to put down. One reader devoured Outlander at a demolition derby, Wuthering Heights during a dramatic high school breakup, The Time Traveler’s Wife on a deep-sea fishing boat, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo across several graduation ceremonies in a whirlwind spring. Whether the genre is romance, fantasy, or horror, books that use multiple timelines often keep readers turning pages long into the night.
A well-written story with layered timelines or parallel universes can be a truly transformative experience (just ask fans of Addie LaRue). Here’s a round-up of recent reads that have completely transfixed readers. Best of luck tackling this genre—without needing an alternate timeline of your own!
Let's get started.
The Sirens
by Emilia Hart
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK - #1 LibraryReads Pick - Indie Next Pick
If you were a fan of this author’s incredible debut novel, Weyward, you are going to LOVE The Sirens. Told over three distinctly different timelines, The Sirens, as the name may suggest, focuses on stories around and about water.
In 2019. Lucy has a horrifying dream. When she finally wakes up, she finds her hands around her lover’s throat. Lucy is shaken from the vivid scene she lived through just before the attack. She flees to her sister’s house on the Australian coast, hoping to get some help processing the terrifying incident. But Jess is nowhere to be found.
In 1999 (which we in the industry refer to as “historical fiction”), Jess is a lonely teenager in a small, quiet town where nothing ever happens. Until JESS happened. She’s been diagnosed with an incredibly rare allergy to water, and she deals with her feelings through drawing. A young, handsome art teacher takes notice of Jess’ work, seeing a maturity and depth of feeling that belies her young age.
In 1800. Twin girls have been ripped from their loving father in Europe and forced onto a convict ship bound for a faraway place called Australia. Eliza and Mary have always feared the ocean. Their mother died in a tragic drowning when they were small, which might be a clue as to the changes they are seeing in their bodies. And the sea is beginning to call both girls, a constant noise like waves crashing on the beach. How long can Eliza and Mary ignore the summons of the ocean?
Great Big Beautiful Life: Reese's Book Club
by Emily Henry
A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK ∙ AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
There is an Emily Henry book that belongs on ANY list we curate! Great Big Beautiful Life tells the story of Margaret Ives, a former tabloid princess whose wealth was obtained tragically, and she is a member of one of the most famous families on the planet. And now she is ready to share her life story with the world. She just isn’t sure who can really tell her story with the reverence it so clearly deserves.
Two authors arrive on Little Crescent Island for one reason: to compete for the honor of telling the world the true story of THE Margaret Ives.
Margaret has her motives of course, and depending on who is writing it, her life story might be a romance, a mystery, a tragedy or a fairy tale. She tells both Alice and Hayden bits and pieces of her story, but they are different bits. And Margaret had both of them sign an NDA, so they can’t trade information with each other, but they can share enough to know that she is telling them two different stories. There probably won’t be a happily-ever-after at the end of this story, which is told through compelling flashes back to Margaret’s pampered youth.
All This and More
by Peng Shepherd
Confession time: We can totally judged this one by the cover! The open doors and dotted lines connecting them all is so intriguing.
Marsh has always been a play-it-safe kind of gal. And her life is still a shambles. Marsh is sure that she’s lost her chance at everything. Romance, adventure, mystery, personal and professional fulfillment…you know, the usual stuff that 45-year-old women look back on so casually.
Marsh’s luck just might be turning around, though. She is selected to be the star of a reality show that uses cutting-edge quantum technology that allows contestants the chance to fix all of their past mistakes to live the future that they missed out on.
Now Marsh does become a famous lawyer, she gets back together with her high school sweetheart, she travels the globe like she always dreamed, and she suddenly realizes that All This and More’s promises might be too good to be true. The technology IS amazing, but SOMETHING feels a bit off.
Is it possible that any woman’s life can be everything she wants it to be? More importantly, is it worth it? In a unique twist, this book puts the reader in the driver’s seat! Don’t miss it.
The God of the Woods
by Liz Moore
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2024
Pro-tip: listened to the audiobook version of this title. It was gripping. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with multiple timelines if you aren't flipping the pages yourself but this story gets its claws into your brain and won't let go.
In August of 1975, Barbara Van Laar goes missing from a summer camp. That is terrifying enough, but this isn’t the first time a child from the Van Laar family has gone missing. Barbara’s older brother also disappeared from the summer camp, and there has been no sign of him since that fateful day 14 years ago.
Learning the secrets of the Van Laar family takes the reader on a journey through time, space, and evil when two different timelines converge!
Code Noir: Fictions
by Canisia Lubrin - Christina Sharpe
Winner of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
“Code Noir is storytelling at its deepest and most intimate. These stories are magic, and you must enter them as if you, too, are wondrous.” —Dionne Brand, author of Nomenclature, Theory, and Map to the Door of No Return by Cainsia Lubrin
It's rare to read a debut that is as exceptional as this one. The structure of this novel is based on the infamous Code Noir, a real set of decrees passed by King Louis XIV in 1685 that defined the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire.
King Louis’ original Code Noir contained 59 articles. Lubrin’s book has 59 stories, linked together through unforgettable, multilayered fragments that explore time and place. To add even more to this incredible tale, each story is accompanied by Torkwase Dyson, an acclaimed visual artist. The illustrations change as frequently as the story does, and readers will experience historical fiction, speculative fiction, futuristic fantasy, and more. Don’t skip the forward from Christina Sharpe, a prominent Black studies scholar and author of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, which was published in 2016.
The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree
by India Hayford
*A Publishers Marketplace BUZZ BOOKS Selection*
The author of this lush narrative is known for work that is informed by relationships within the natural world, and her background as a teacher, artist, and naturalist shines through on every page of this must-read novel. The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree is set on the land where Hayford’s roots stretch back 200 years, and the connection is evident in every word.
Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts, dances at bars, has a special relationship with snakes, and sometimes works for a circus. Now, for the first time in more than 10 years, life has brought her back to her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse, a locale that holds a very important place in her heart. The plan is to stay for as short a time as possible. Genevieve wants to pay her respects to family members buried nearby and then beat feet out of town immediately. But her plans are wrecked after a chance encounter with a young Vietnam veteran connects her with roots of a family tree that she thought long dead. Should Genevieve stay in Arkansas and try to connect with her past? Or should she heed the impulse telling her to run at all costs?
There Are Rivers in the Sky
by Elif Shafak
Booker Prize finalist Shafak has crafted an incredible story with There Are Rivers in the Sky. The gripping tale of three characters, two mighty rivers, and a single drop of water won’t let you go until you finish the last page. And perhaps not even then!
Ashurbanipal, king of the ancient city of Ninevah of Mesopotamia, built the world’s most incredible library on the banks of the Tigris. When his reign ended, so did the library. One thing remained, a poem called The Epic of Gilgamesh, which binds together two rivers and three lives.
In 1840s London, Arthur is dreaming of escaping his drunk father and his mentally ill mother. Luckily, Arthur has a brilliant memory and harnessing it is his one chance at a decent life. When his ability earns him a job at a publishing house, his world is opened, and one book truly catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.
London 2018: Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames in order to escape her husband. Zaleekah has made the decision to end her own life at the end of the month, but discovering an ancient, strange book about her homeland buys her a bit more time.
A single drop of water can unite us, and a single drop of water can be a harbinger of death. After all: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget”.
In Five Years
by Rebecca Serle
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Good Morning America, FabFitFun, and Marie Claire Book Club Pick
Where do you see yourself in five years? A question many of us have been asked, but have any of us had a satisfactory answer? If you read only one book on this list, please make it In Five Years. Striking, relatable, powerful…this one really has it all.
Dannie lives her life meticulously. Everything is planned. By the book. She is checking all of the boxes: career, marriage proposal, etc. Life is regimented. Strictly planned. No deviation allowed.
But one day, Dannie awakens to find herself in a different apartment. There is a different man beside her in bed. There is a different diamond on her left hand. She spends one hour exactly five years in the future, and when she wakes again in her own timeline and bed, she can’t forget the possibilities she saw.
It is the most important hour of Dannie’s life. This is a can’t-miss love story, with an ending that isn’t the one you expected.
Haunting Adeline
by H D Carlton
AN INSTANT NYT BESTSELLER, USA TODAY BESTSELLER, AND AMAZON TOP 5 BESTSELLER!
“I’ve chased you across time and space, and you’ve never been able to get away.”
Now this is a quotable line!
Adeline has inherited her late grandmother’s gothic mansion. What could be more fitting for a flourishing author? But Adeline soon discovers that she isn’t alone. Someone is stalking her through the house, there are strange flowers in vases, threatening messages, and even some light vandalism. Turns out that Adeline isn’t the first person in her family to fall victim to a shadowy tormentor.
Her great-grandmother’s detailed journals are an incredible source for Adeline. They tell the story of her own desperate attempts to identify and vanquish the phantom stalker. But they don’t tell the story of her murder.
Parson’s Manor holds both Adeline’s future and her past. But which timeline will she choose to live in?
The Things We Cannot Say: A WWII Historical Fiction Novel
by Kelly Rimmer
OVER 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD!
The New York Times bestseller—for fans of All the Light We Cannot See and The Tattooist of Auschwitz!
Alina Dziak lives in Nazi-occupied Poland. She is 15 and engaged to the love of her life, Tomasz, who heads off to college before the occupation can really take hold. But then things fall apart, Polish citizens are being rounded up. Carted away, toward the smokestacks in the distance that constantly belch foul smoke.
When her beloved grandmother is on her deathbed, Alice is overwhelmed, emotionally and physically. She has a special needs son, an insanely smart daughter who needs constant stimulation and entertainment, and a husband who has basically checked out. But when her grandmother asks her to go to Poland to solve a mystery, Alice makes the momentous decision to leave her immediate family behind to try and find answers in Poland to questions that she didn’t even know to ask.
Alina and Tomasz are battling with fate. Alice is battling time. Can she discover the truth of her grandmother’s secret before the old woman takes her final breath? If you loved The Nightengale, you are definitely going to adore this one!
What say you, Page & Pairing readers? We’ve focused on releases for the last few seasons, but we would love to know what evergreen titles you are recommending for friends, family, or book groups. And tell us your favorite classic timeline titles, too! We are always looking for new titles for our teetering TBRs!