THE TIME THIEF

Scant days after her return to the 21st century, Kate Dyer desperately wants to return to the 18th to rescue her friend and fellow time traveler Peter Schock. Twenty-nine years after Kate and her father left 1763 without him, Peter has resigned himself to the life of an 18th-century gentleman. Meanwhile, the arch-criminal Tar Man is loose in the 21st and thrilling at the opportunities. When Kate and Peter’s father travel back by accident to 1792, Peter resolves to keep his identity secret—he’s not the boy they’re looking for—while he helps them to repair the antigravity machine that brought them there and that may yet enable them to rescue him from 1763. Buckley-Archer keeps the multiple plot lines moving nimbly, following Kate and the grown Peter in 1792, the Tar Man as he maneuvers through the modern criminal underworld and Kate’s father as he struggles to bring Kate and Peter home. It’s a terrific middle volume in the Gideon adventure, leaving readers and characters poised for a conclusion that promises action aplenty and thought-provoking explorations of the potential havoc wreaked by time travel. (Fiction. 10+)