A high-spirited time-travel adventure.
In Laws’ SF novel, a group of unwitting time travelers must fight to survive—and maybe save the Earth itself.
On a far-distant planet, the Council of the Universe has decided on something called the Earthling Extermination Project, a measure meant to counter what the Council sees as the imminent danger posed to thousands of planets by Earth’s alarmingly unstable human population. On Earth itself, a group of guests are gathered at Baltimore’s Zelles Hotel for a charity event. Eight of these guests—trust fund babies Angus and Keiko, wacky ex-military man Carl, resourceful Kara, Buddhist Ellen, smart young former honor student Bernie, food bank volunteer Bailey, and bland and reliable Roger—find themselves trapped on an elevator that mysteriously takes them not to a floor of the hotel but a century into the future, where they quickly learn a few things. First, their disappearance is well-known to history, which has dubbed them the Charity Eight. Second, lots of people disappeared from elevators in 2025 and are now reappearing in 2125. And third, people in 2125 aren’t happy about that fact—they dub the time-displaced new arrivals terrorist aliens and subject known “vates” to random mob violence. The elevator that deposited the Charity Eight in the future also promised to return them to their own time in two weeks, meaning they somehow have to survive that long. But if the Council has its way, will Earth be doomed? It’s an energetic setup, and Laws largely fulfills the premise’s promise of intrigue and deadpan comedy. There’s some lazy writing (characters “hightail it” or are “thrust into the hot seat”), but the novel’s sharp dialogue and winning cast of contrasting characters more than compensates. The Charity Eight are a terrifically engaging mixed bag of personality traits, which makes for richly entertaining reading as their trials demand all their adaptability.
A high-spirited time-travel adventure.Pub Date: July 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780996133500
Page Count: 261
Publisher: Stroud House Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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