Connie Willis

Journeying back in time to the year 1320, twenty-first century Oxford woman Kivrin arrives in the past during the outbreak of a deadly epidemic.

When a time-travel lab suddenly cancels assignments for no apparent reason and switches around everyone's schedules, time-traveling historians Michael, Merope, and Polly find themselves in World War II, facing air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history--to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history...

"When level-headed Francie arrives in Roswell, New Mexico, for her college roommate's UFO-themed wedding-complete with a true-believer bridegroom-she can't help but roll her eyes at all the wide-eyed talk of aliens, which obviously don't exist. Imagine her surprise, then, when she is abducted by one"--

Jim, a blogger, has just left a radio interview where he argued that nostalgia for obsolete items-- like books-- impedes progress, when a rainstorm strands him in Ozymandias Books. He discovers that Ozymandias seems to be an old-fashioned bookstore, but is a pristine, seemingly endless wonderland of books. While Jim searches for his childhood favorite, he comes to understand how tragic it is that some things may be gone forever... like the magic...

Science fiction icon Connie Willis brilliantly mixes a speculative plot, the wit of Nora Ephron, and the comedic flair of P. G. Wodehouse in Crosstalk-- a genre-bending novel that pushes social media, Smartphone technology, and twenty-four-hour availability to hilarious and chilling extremes as one young woman abruptly finds herself with way more connectivity than she ever desired. In the not-too-distant future, a simple outpatient procedure to increase...