Time Travel for Beginners

BOOKTOPIA BOOK OF THE MONTH

Three strangers’ lives are forever changed when they’re all drawn to a mysterious agency claiming to have unlocked the secret to time travel in this dazzling novel from award-winning author Jaclyn Moriarty.

Anna, Teddy, and Jade are on a collision course. The Agency is the cause. It is also the solution.

On a quiet road nestled within the bustle of Sydney lies a nondescript storefront known simply as the Time Travel Agency. At once a confounding mystery and a beacon of hope, the Agency seems to attract those who need it most.

Single mother Anna is in desperate need of change, and the Agency gives her the chance to begin her career – and life – anew. Teddy is a genius at salvaging businesses but needs saving himself, and he’s drawn to the Agency hoping to travel back in time to untangle his troubled childhood and his recently imploded marriage. Jade has no interest in the Agency at all, because there’s no way people are literally time travelling, right? Jade’s present is challenging enough, with her spirted, increasingly bad-tempered daughter and a deeply buried secret too painful for words.

As Anna, Teddy and Jade’s paths converge, the question of just how legitimate the Agency’s ventures into the past are becomes a mysterious, provocative, tantalising, and even heart-wrenching one to parse – but there’s no denying that the ripple effects through all three of their lives are very, very real…

‘A joyfully sad, quietly clever, and loudly delightful time-travel novel. By turns a meditation on mourning, happiness, and the deep truths of living. It only gets more delicious with every read.’ JUSTINE LARBALESTIER and New York Times bestselling author SCOTT WESTERFELD, coauthors of The Mortons

‘A truly amazing book! Absolutely gorgeous, smart, funny, deep, dreamy, and perfect. And it comes together beautifully at the end. It left my heart full and happy.’ RACHEL COHN, New York Times bestselling coauther of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

‘I could wish I wrote it but then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of reading this truly extraordinary, exquisite novel. It’s both hilarious and heart-breaking, thoughtful and compelling. It’s hard for me (I’m the eldest) but I just have to say it, my sister is a literary genius.’ LIANE MORIARTY, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Here One Moment

‘A quiet Sydney shop offers impossible journeys to those who need them most.’ THE AUSTRALIAN, ‘the big books of 2026’