If you think books about time travel are all nerdy sci-fi and not enough passion, think again! This hand-picked selection of novels explores the romantic possibilities — and complexities — that arise when past, present, and future collide. While the methods of transportation vary from stone pillars to malevolent houses to good old unexplained authorial magic, you’re guaranteed to swoon in delight as these chronologically challenged lovers find each other across time. For more product info, click on the book cover in our swirly, whirly carousel below! (Think of it as a portal to the future, in which you have a new awesome book to read.)
The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes
This literary thriller is a twist on the serial-killer theme: a would-be victim goes on the hunt for her attacker. Harper Curtis is a time-traveling Depression-era killer who is driven to murder the “shining girls” — young women from each decade of the 20th century whose bright, promising lives could change the world. In the 1990s, Kirby Mazrachi is the only “shining girl” to escape death. Determined to bring her assailant to justice after the attack, she joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with Dan Velasquez, the jaded ex-homicide reporter who covered her years-old cold case. While the mechanics of Harper’s time travel aren’t particularly well thought out or satisfying (see our full review), the vivid characterizations of the victims will stay with you long after their brief lives are snuffed out. Likewise, the love story in this book comes to a slow boil, with an ending that’s open to interpretation.
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Never mind that disappointing movie: the original book is a smart, genuinely moving modern classic. 
Henry De Tamble is a librarian in Chicago who suffers from “chrono-displacement disorder,” i.e., he suddenly and randomly (and nakedly!) time-travels to various points in his own life. In this universe, there’s no paradox with Henry seeing his past and future selves, since he already knows he’s a time traveler, and he and his other selves frequently cover for each other — with varying degrees of success. From his point of view, he first meets his wife Clare when he’s 28 and she’s 20; she recognizes him and greets him warmly, but he’s never seen her before. From her point of view, she’s grown up knowing Henry from earliest childhood (don’t worry, it’s not creepy), and is long since accustomed to his ever-changing appearance and age. The story alternates between their perspectives as their relationship grows, deepens, and suffers blows, like any other. Whether you read it as a literal time-travel fantasy or a metaphor for how people change over time within a long-term relationship, it’s a beautifully written and deeply moving tale with one heck of a tearjerker ending.
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Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
What if you could live your life again and again, until you got it right? That’s the intriguing question posed by Life After Life. On a snowy winter’s night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an upper-class English family, but asphyxiates before she can draw her first breath. On the second try, Ursula’s mother cuts the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck, and she survives… for now. Ursula lives again and again, suffering some impressively grisly deaths before finally making it to adolescence and a new, more adult range of possible futures, building up to the all-time time-travel debate: what if you had the chance to go back and kill Hitler? (Not a spoiler: it’s introduced in the opening pages.) WWI and WWII shape Ursula’s character and circumstances, but no more so than her own choices and personal relationships. It’s a dazzling, complicated portrait of 20th-century England and an engaging thought experiment into the alternate lives we all might have led.
The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley
The Winter Sea properly falls more within the modern-gothic-romance genre, but since it does technically involve time travel, I’m including it here. Carrie McClelland is a historical fiction writer researching Scottish history for a book about the Pretender’s (James Stuart) 18th-century attempted uprising against England’s Queen Anne. Carrie decides to tell her story from the viewpoint of a distant ancestor, Sophia Paterson, in the setting of New Slains Castle, in Aberdeenshire; she rents a small country cottage to focus on her writing, but finds herself mysteriously drawn to the castle over and over. Meanwhile, there are a couple of delightful distractions in the form of her landlord’s two handsome sons: frivolous, womanizing Stuie and quiet, intense Graham. As Carrie plunges deeper into history, she discovers that her connection with the past is stronger than she ever suspected.
Outlander, Diana Gabaldon
Diana Gabaldon is assuredly the grande dame of time-travel romances, and where better to start than the first volume of her epic romance series: Outlander. Although it’s a hefty 600 pages, it works quite well as a stand-alone, although you may not be able to resist finding out what happens to her surprisingly charismatic characters! Just after WWII, Claire Randall is a combat nurse back from the war and newly reunited with her husband Frank; while they’re on vacation in rural Scotland, she goes exploring one day and unknowingly touches an ancient stone circle that’s actually a time-travel portal. BOOM she’s in 18th-century Scotland that’s torn apart by fighting clans and religious war. Soon, Claire is swept off her feet by a passionate romance with Scottish warrior Jamie Fraser, using her 20th-century medical expertise to help her new friends, and adjusting to how vastly different life was three centuries ago. Over time, she braves hardship and cultural differences to carve out a place for herself… but when the stone circle reappears and offers a way back home, will Claire take it?