Books Five Books About Five Books Where Time Can’t Be Trusted Five books that remind us that time is a slippery thing… By Casey Scieszka | Published on March 25, 2026 Photo by Zulfa Nazer [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Zulfa Nazer [via Unsplash] I have always loved books where time cannot be trusted— immortal characters, time travel, parallel multiverses. We all tell ourselves that time is a linear construction that runs from the past to the present to the future, but most of us experience it bending and stretching and compressing throughout our lives. Remember how long summer felt when you were young? And tell me, where oh where did today already go? When I was writing The Fountain, this was exactly what I wanted to get into. Vera, the main character, is a secretly 214 year old young-looking woman who returns to her hometown in the Catskill Mountains to figure out what did this to her so she can reverse it and finally be released. I wondered: what would time feel like if you had an infinite supply of it? Freedom? Punishment? Some very complicated combination of both? Here are 5 books I adore that remind us that time is a slippery thing. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a quick and charming read about a coffee shop in Tokyo where customers can time travel.  It follows a handful of characters who each harbor their own reasons to seek out another time— an unfinished love story, an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, a reunion with an estranged sister, and even a foray into the future to try to see an as-of-yet unborn child.  Naturally, nothing goes exactly as planned. Memories can’t always be trusted and the past is seemingly impossible to change. But the future is perhaps where everyone’s chance at the redemption they seek actually waits if they can only fully understand and accept the reality of their present.   There are rules of course. Most importantly: you cannot leave the shop during your travel and the trip can only be as long as it takes for your coffee to get cold. I promise, you won’t want to get out of your own chair while reading, and you’ll slurp this one down quicker than a cup of coffee!  In Universes by Emet North In Universes is a heady, dense, and rewardingly complex read about a queer physicist studying multiverses.  As their dissatisfaction with their own life in the lab grows, they become increasingly obsessed with the idea that there might be other versions of themself living better lives in parallel worlds.  We as the reader get to experience these worlds, and the kaleidoscope of characters, locations, and interests that overlap and shimmer and change throughout all of them makes a gorgeous puzzle that you’ll be tempted to “solve”, but the beauty lays in holding all of the possibilities simultaneously in your mind, the way a multiverse itself supposedly works. “Time” here isn’t the only thing that gets slippery here. It’s also space and reality itself! Get ready for your own personal trip down all the multiverse “what ifs” of your life every time you close the book. To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers To Be Taught if Fortunate is a delightful novella that follows four astronauts in the twenty-second century whose work takes them to far away planets they are surveying for the possibility of human habitation. Incredible advances in biomedical technology allow these explorers to survive in otherwise hostile environments and do amazing things like turn previously dangerous levels of radiation into food.  There’s just one catch— going into a cryopreservation-like state while hopping lightyears through galaxies means when these astronauts reawaken it’s been years since they closed their eyes.  Unsurprisingly, eventually, as the planet hopping adds up, the Earth they once left behind is no longer the same. The people who once knew them have significantly aged or are even gone, and the purpose of their mission grows less and less clear now that things are different back home.  You’ll be moved by the bravery it would require to not only take on such physically dangerous work off-planet, but to sacrifice one’s entire experience of normal time.  A fantastic read, especially as an intro for folks who don’t consider themselves space sci-fi fans.  Be sure to also check out the Q & A at the end between the author and her mother Nikki Chambers who’s an astrobiology professor who consulted on the science of the book! Kindred by Octavia E. Butler Kindred is a time travel classic for a reason and Butler is an absolute queen of speculative fiction.  This one follows Dana, a Black writer in 1970s L.A. who is repeatedly thrust back in time to an 1800s plantation in Maryland through dizzy spells she cannot control.  Where hours pass in her experience of the past, just minutes go by in the present, befuddling both her and her white husband Kevin who has been at her side the whole time. While at first he doesn’t entirely believe Dana (who would?), during the next incident he too slips through time and together they are transported back to the past. It’s a blisteringly close look at slavery, interracial marriage, the Antebellum south, what has and hasn’t changed in America over no matter how much time has passed. High drama, high stakes, you will be racing through pages late into the night.  After you get obsessed, you can also read the graphic novel adaptation by Damian Duffy and watch the miniseries on FX.  Retro by Jessica Goldstein Retro follows Ash, a failed actress who gets a job at a time travel tourism company that caters to the super wealthy.  Think: your 21st birthday at a speakeasy in the roaring 20s, history buff dads rubbing elbows at a Philadelphia tavern with Benjamin Franklin, coworkers keeping lovers in multiple decades that they hop the Retro Metro to visit on their lunch breaks.  It’s a page-turning examination of the nature of nostalgia and how we all want different things from the same, shared past– a past that may not be quite as resilient to interference from the future as the mysterious CEO of Retro wants everyone to believe. Absolutely chock full of delicious details from every era, with workplace drama and romance to boot. It’s funny and punchy and smart and you’ll want to go back in time to read it again for the first time as soon as you finish.[end-mark] Buy the Book The Fountain Casey Scieszka Buy Book The Fountain Casey Scieszka Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Five Books Where Time Can’t Be Trusted appeared first on Reactor.