In a time travel novel a person or his/her consciousness is projected into the past or future. Some examples of how they may travel are: fall asleep to awaken in a new time, mesmerisms, dreams, instantaneous transportation, cryonics, nuclear radiation accidents, stasis fields, simple random displacement, sleep-induced suspension and specialized machines. The importance of a time travel novel is not where/when the traveler goes, but what effects his/her actions will have on other time periods.
– from The Science Fiction Encyclopedia by Peter Nicholls
Adams, Douglas – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
For Dirk Gently, private detective, the search for a missing cat uncovers a bewildered ghost, a secret time traveler and a devastating secret that threatens the future of humanity.
Anthony, Piers – Bearing An Hourglass
A disillusioned wanderer becomes the incarnation of Time, destined to live from present to past. At the same time, he must somehow prevent Satan from dominating the human world. Also try the rest of the Incarnations of Immortality series.
Bear, Greg – Eon
Perhaps it wasn't from our time, perhaps it wasn't even from our universe, but perhaps the arrival of the 300-km-long stone was the answer to humanity's desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Also try the sequel: Eternity .
Butler, Octavia – Kindred
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back, again and again, to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father the daughter who will become Dana's ancestor.
Card, Orson Scott – Pastwatch
Three time travelers from a ruined and doomed future Earth journey to the time of Columbus's landing, hoping to alter events so that the contact between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres will be less disastrous for the American Indians, indeed, for the whole world. Also try Card’s Enchantment.
Clarke, Arthur C. – Time’s Eye
A mysterious glowing orb appears over Central Asia, ripping the Earth into conflicting eras of the past, present and future, mingling UN peacekeepers from the year 2037 with military forces from past eras.
Crichton, Michael – Timeline
Sometime in the future, a group of students is studying an archaeological site in France when the professor in charge disappears. While uncovering 600-year-old documents from the remains of a monastery, they discover a note dated April 7, 1357, and written in the professor's hand, that says "Help me."
Fforde, Jasper – The Eyre Affair
Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Based on an imaginary world where time and reality bend in the most convincing and original way since Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Eyre Affair is a delightful rabbit hole of a read: once you fall in you may never come back. Also try the rest of Fforde’s Thursday Next series.
Finney, Jack – Time and Again
First published in 1970, this highly original cult classic tells the story of Simon Morley, a young Manhattan illustrator who is selected by a secret government agency – presumably to test Einstein's theory that the past actually co-exists with the present – and finds himself suddenly transported back to the New York of the 1880s. Also try From Time to Time .
Flint, Eric – 1632
A mysterious accident in time causes 21st-century American democracy to collide head-on with the Thirty Years War in 17th-century Germany, as Mike Stearn and a group of armed miners take on a gang of strangely attired invaders who are threatening peaceful Grantville, West Virginia. Also try: 1633 , 1634 , Grantville Gazette and Ring of Fire .
Frank, J. Suzanne – Reflections In the Nile
After entering an ancient chamber on an archeological dig, Chloe Kingsley is sent back in time to the year 1452 B.C. to the Egyptian court of Hatshepsut and into the body of a corrupt priestess, where she is now forced to face her new environment and the challenges it holds. Also try the rest of her historical novels.
Gabaldon, Diana – Outlander
Her husband is two centuries away, she is related to her lover's mortal enemy, and her neighbors think she's a witch. In this unforgettable novel of time travel, Diana Gabaldon fuses wry, modern sensibility with the drama, passion and violence of the 18th century as she tells the story of one daring woman and the man who loves her. Also try the rest of the Outlander series.
Haldeman, Joe – The Forever War
Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself – a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant 1,000-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand – despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable and very far away. The true test of his mettle, however, will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel, the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries – and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home... Also try Forever Peace and Forever Free .
Niffenegger, Audrey – The Time Traveler’s Wife
Niffenegger's innovative debut novel is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36, and were married when Clare was 23 and Henry 31. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets, and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.
Niven, Larry – Rainbow Mars
Weaving together time travel and fantasy, Niven creates an utterly unique novel on the origin of the Martian "canals." Hanville Svetz was born into a future to match the sorriest predictions of Greenpeace. Most of Earth's original life forms are extinct. It is Svetz's job to go back in time and retrieve them, or at least it was until his Institute for Temporal Research was transferred. Now, with a new boss obsessed with stars and planets, Svetz must figure out why the Martian canals have gone dry and what that means for Earth's future. When Svetz learns how the sapient Martian species were wiped out, he realizes that Earth could soon fall victim to a similar fate. Together with his dog, Wrona, a visitor from the distant past, and Miya, an astronaut with her own complex history, Svetz must struggle to unravel a puzzle that will tax not just his rational mind but the very limits of his imagination.
Simmons, Dan – Hyperion
On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope – and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands. Also try the rest of the Hyperion Cantos: Fall of Hyperion , Endymion and Rise of Endymion .
Twain, Mark – A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court
A Yankee of the late 19th century finds himself in King Arthur's English court and tries to show the people there how to change things.
Vonnegut, Kurt – Timequake
On February 13th, 2001, according to Vonnegut, the universe will tire momentarily of expanding forever. What's the point? Maybe it would be more fun to shrink for a change and have a reunion of all the stuff back where it began. Then it could make a great big BANG again. It will shrink back to February 17th, 1991, but will then decide that expansion is the way to go, after all. As time marches on once more to 2001, though, everybody and everything will have to do exactly what they did the first time through the decade, for good or ill: marry the wrong person, bet on the wrong horse. Whatever! Ten years of deja vu all over again! At least deja vu doesn't cause physical injury and property damage.
Wells, H.G. – The Time Machine
An enduring classic, H.G. Wells’ first novel, is a tale of Darwinian evolution taken to its extreme. Its hero, a young scientist, travels 800,000 years into the future and discovers a dying earth populated by two strange humanoid species: the brutal Morlocks and the gentle but nearly helpless Eloi.
Willis, Connie – The Doomsday Book
A time-traveling history student is trapped in the Middle Ages, dangerously close to the onset of the Black Plague. Her rescuers in 21st-century Oxford battle their own deadly epidemic to reach her in time. Willis balances two storylines with exquisite skill as she depicts a pair of closely knit communities – each facing an unknown and frightening enemy. Willis uses the language of time travel and advanced technologies to speak of human concerns, finding parallels that transcend time in the hopes, struggles and fears of her modern and medieval characters. Also try Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog .