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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.
"[A] satisfying supernatural romance about lovers brought together across time...readers who enjoyed Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife will be enchanted." - Publishers Weekly
"An ingenious and winsome novel." - Kirkus Reviews
"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
"Time After Time is the story of Joe and Nora, the love they find amidst impossible circumstances, their fight to stay together, and the great sacrifices they make along the way. I utterly loved this clever, charming, hopeful tale of true love against all odds." - Ariel Lawhon, author of I Was Anastasia
This information about Time After Time was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Jon LaPook
Lisa Grunwald is the author of seven novels, including Time After Time, The Irresistible Henry House, and The Theory of Everything. Along with her husband, former Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen Adler, she edited the anthologies The Marriage Book, Women's Letters, and Letters of the Century. Grunwald is an occasional essayist and runs a side hustle called ProcrastinationArts, where she sells the other things she makes with pencils and paper. She lives in New York City.
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