Now, Then, and Everywhen

Walker (the CHRONOS Files series) opens the CHRONOS Origins series with this ambitious time-travel adventure. In 2136 Maryland, graduate student Madison Grace digs up a bronze disk in her grandmother’s garden and accidentally pops into 1906 Florida. She’s discovered a time-travel device that only she can use, but after jumping around in time, she returns to her own era to discover millions of lives erased. In 2304 Washington D.C., Tyson Reyes is a historian with the CHRONOS agency who studies the civil rights movement by travelling back in time, which poses risks for him as a mixed-race black Latino man. When Tyson witnesses the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 Ohio, not 1968 Tennessee, he realizes something has gone wrong. Somehow, either Tyson or Madison has altered the past and it’s up to the time travelers to fix it. A slow start establishing Walker’s complex world eventually gives way to a twisty narrative that expertly blends the past and the future. Fans of intelligent time-travel stories will be rewarded. (Apr.)