Borrowed Time

A collection of seven time-bending sci-fi stories by the author of the New York Times–bestselling Lost Fleet series—with new author’s notes for each story.

In “Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in The Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronisms,” a pair of time travelers get stuck in 1964—and in the bodies of their fifteen-year-old selves. It’s a terrible time to have other time travelers looking to kill you. SFRevu called this story “one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in a long time.”

In four interlinked short stories, a pair of Temporal Interventionists try to solve some of history’s greatest mysteries—from the origin of the Spanish Flu to an unexplained explosion in the world’s least-inhabited region in 1908. Why were ironclad warships being developed by both the South and the North at the exact same time during the American Civil War? And why don’t we know who fired the ‘shot heard ’round the world,’ the lone gunshot that started the American Revolution?

In “Joan,” a time-traveling researcher named Kate has gotten a little too close to Joan of Arc, both emotionally and temporally—and now has a chance to rescue her from being burnt at the stake. And in the final story, “Crow’s Feat,” a skeptical writer goes back to Elizabethan England to discover the true author of Shakespeare’s plays.