A feel-good, entertaining blend of humor, philosophy, and romance, with a time-slip twist.
A time-traveling man tries to get back to the future and his beloved wife in this novel.
Time is a bit elastic for Danny Maytree, 75, an actor-turned-novelist living in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. As he tells Samantha, his wife of 38 years, “once in a while my mind and the conventional notion of time drift a little out of synch.” It’s 2021, and Danny’s current work in progress concerns an actor who returns to the past to reverse bad career decisions. After several strange, perhaps mescaline-induced experiences (including a conversation with his mysterious rescue mutt, Tali), Danny finds himself young again, in Beverly Hills in 1974. Life imitates art as Danny tries to get his bearings; he writes a screenplay based on his novel while also making career decisions informed by a lifetime of learning. But success is not his chief motivation. Stuck in the past, he hasn’t met Sam yet and is bereft without her. He believes that somehow getting his movie produced will restore him to his wife and his life. Through the course of his time-travel journey, several odd personal encounters and many mystical revelations open Danny’s eyes about the past, forgiveness, and grace. Lenz, whose memoir North of Hollywood (2012) recounted his life as an actor, grounds his novel in showbiz practicalities, such as getting funding. Cinema’s alteration of reality through techniques like montages and jump-cuts makes an effective metaphor for Danny’s experience, and clever, snappy dialogue beefs up the more abstruse mystical elements. Intriguing complications include the question “Have you ever considered the possibility that you sort of cling to Sam? Isn’t that a no-no in your spiritual view of the world?” A life-affirming ending wraps everything up.
A feel-good, entertaining blend of humor, philosophy, and romance, with a time-slip twist. (Time-travel novel, 16+)Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9848442-6-5
Page Count: 383
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.
The first installment of Liu’s Julia Z saga is an SF thriller set in a near-future “post-truth age” where the use of AI and the inundation of digital disinformation and data pollution have blurred the lines between delusion and reality.
Julia—whose immigrant mother, a divisive political activist, was murdered during a border protest—has lived on her own since she was 14. A brilliant hacker now 23, she’s been trying to live in online anonymity, acutely aware of the multitude of ways she can be identified and tracked. Living in a Boston suburb and struggling to make ends meet, she inadvertently becomes entangled with a lawyer named Piers Neri and his search for his artist wife, Elli Krantz—famous for her experimental work in vivid dreaming—who may or may not have been kidnapped. A prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, Piers goes on the run with the help of Julia—and together, they begin putting together pieces of a mind-bogglingly intricate puzzle that links Elli to a powerful criminal with a global reach. As Julia digs deeper into the appeal of vivid dreaming and the criminal’s ruthless endeavors, she discovers the sham that is the American Dream: “America was corrupt and steeped in sin. The powerful had rigged the game for themselves and turned the country into a panopticon to imprison the rest of us. Anytime one of the powerless—it didn’t matter the color of your skin, the language you spoke, the place you were born in—was on the verge of climbing out, they would be ruthlessly tossed back into the pit.” And amid the backdrop of dealing with unresolved childhood trauma and the need to find her place in the world, she finds something unexpected—herself.
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668083178
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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