Suhana and her friends Mia and Ayaan, who are in the final year of primary school, are whisked off back in time by means of a phone app when they are on a visit to the Houses of Parliament. They quickly establish that the year is 1911, the coronation of a new king is imminent, and they find themselves in the midst of a crowd of women protesting about not having the right to vote. Suhana is amazed to discover that some of these women have brown skin like her, and an acquaintance with Reena Rao of Rajasthan, the king’s goddaughter, is soon made. In the course of this short chapter book, Suhana l ..read more

This is book 2 of The Mender series. Eva is a time traveler, originally sent to this world to “correct its timeline.” In this installment, Eva has abandoned her original mission, set for March 1836, and is living with her new husband, Jim, among the Comanche. But while she tries to adapt to tribal life, she knows her old partner, Tophe, will be coming to complete her original task—kill Francisca Alavez, the “Angel of Goliad,” and change the result of the Texans’ war for Independence from Mexico. This is a well-researched novel set mostly amid a Comanche tribe in 1835 and 1836. Marchman has don ..read more

Geno, an elderly man living in an assisted living facility, believes that he has lived many lives over the course of more than a thousand years. They include, charmingly, one life spent as Oscar Wilde’s cat. He tells the story of his lives to his friend Angel, who works at the facility. Geno’s stories hinge mostly on two of his lives—the ones in which he encountered his soul mate, for whom he still yearns. She is Gaya in his first life, in medieval Iberia, and she is Gladys in his current life, in modern-day California. Geno, it becomes clear, is an unreliable narrator. The reader is left hang ..read more

Calico is a parallel-narrative, time-slip historical thriller in which we meet Beth McDade, a homicide detective in Barstow, California in 2019. Called to the scene of an accident involving the fatal collision of a motor home with a vagrant, she finds things don’t quite add up. Apart from anything else, the filthy man’s clothing looks about a century old, which could mean he’s been living rough, off the grid. Other strange anomalies are apparent in the skeletal contents of a coffin found at a building site. Meanwhile a YouTube wannabe chef disappears without trace. Beth’s curiosity kicks in fa ..read more