In the City of Time

From the author of the highly acclaimed Ink, Iron, and Glass series, this YA duology sends three science prodigies on a time-traveling adventure to save the Earth--if they don’t accidentally destroy it first--in Gwendolyn Clare’s In the City of Time.

In 1891, Willa Marconi’s life falls apart when her mentor at the University of Bologna unexpectedly dies. She loses her laboratory access and her stipend, but she refuses to let anyone take her research away. While testing her prototype radio equipment, she detects a mysterious signal and pursues its origin.

In 2034, a cataclysmic event has rendered the Earth uninhabitable, and humankind survives by living inside of artificial worlds. Riley would do anything for Jaideep, who lost his parents in the collapse of the Bay Area pocket universe--and anything includes building a time machine so they can travel back to the 19th century, prevent the destabilization of the planet, and rewrite history.

But the experiment goes wrong, accidentally pulling Willa forward in time and stranding the three of them in a strange, seemingly abandoned city. Now they’ve got a glitchy time machine, a scary android time cop hot on their trail, and some tangled temporal mechanics to unravel. Can they save the Earth when the Continuity Agency is dead-set on preserving the current timeline?

Gwendolyn Clare teaches college biology in central Pennsylvania, where she lives with too many cats and never enough books. She is the author of the Ink, Iron, and Glass duology. Her short stories can be found in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.