a lifestyle blog for book lovers
Menu
Time After Time: A Novel
On December 5, 1937, Joe first meets Nora, a beautiful woman who seems to have appeared out of nowhere in the concourse of Grand Central Terminal. She seems a little disoriented; her dress is endearingly out of style. But she’s witty and warm and fun, and Joe is instantly smitten. There’s just one problem: when Joe tries to walk Nora home, she vanishes, seemingly into thin air. When he calls the number she gave him, well, that’s when things get really strange. Don’t worry, readers, he’ll see her again, and puzzling out the how, where, and why it’s so complicated is half the fun of reading. This novel inventively combines history, mystery, and love story, and Manhattanhenge. A must-read for fans of The Time-Traveler’s Wife and The Masterpiece; it also has interesting parallels to A Gentleman in Moscow.
About the Book
A magical love story, inspired by the legend of a woman who vanished from Grand Central Terminal, sweeps readers from the 1920s to World War II and beyond. “Readers who enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife will be enchanted.”—Publishers Weekly
“I utterly loved this clever, charming, hopeful tale of true love against all odds.”—Ariel Lawhon, New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia
On a clear December morning in 1937, at the famous gold clock in Grand Central Terminal, Joe Reynolds, a hardworking railroad man from Queens, meets a vibrant young woman who seems mysteriously out of place. Nora Lansing is a Manhattan socialite whose flapper clothing, pearl earrings, and talk of the Roaring Twenties don’t seem to match the bleak mood of Depression-era New York. Captivated by Nora from her first electric touch, Joe despairs when he tries to walk her home and she disappears. Finding her again—and again—will become the focus of his love and his life.
Nora, a fiercely independent aspiring artist, is shocked to find she’s somehow been trapped, her presence in the terminal governed by rules she cannot fathom. It isn’t until she meets Joe that she begins to understand the effect that time is having on her, and the possible connections to the workings of Grand Central and the solar phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge, when the sun rises or sets between the city’s skyscrapers, aligned perfectly with the streets below.
As thousands of visitors pass under the famous celestial blue ceiling each day, Joe and Nora create a life unlike any they could have imagined. With infinite love in a finite space, they take full advantage of the “Terminal City” within a city, dining at the Oyster Bar, visiting the Whispering Gallery, and making a home at the Biltmore Hotel. But when the construction of another landmark threatens their future, Nora and Joe are forced to test the limits of freedom and love.
Delving into Grand Central Terminal’s rich past, Lisa Grunwald crafts a masterful historical novel about a love affair that defies age, class, place, and even time.
Advance praise for Time After Time
“I’ll never again set foot in Grand Central Terminal without looking over my shoulder for Nora and Joe, or marveling at the station itself—a backdrop as intriguing as the love story that unfolds beneath its star-studded ceiling.”—Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones
“Time After Time doesn’t just re-create the lost New York of the 1920s to 1940s, it inhabits it—and so will the reader, in the company of the book’s wonderful characters.”—Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call and The Guarded Gate
Other books in "Novels playing with the concept of time"
Look Inside
