Blackout

Publisher Marketing: Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of time-traveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London s Blitz. And seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can catch up to her in age. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason and switching around everyone s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past. From the people sheltering in the tube stations of London to the retired sailors who set off across the Channel to rescue the stranded British Army from Dunkirk, from shopgirls to ambulance drivers, from spies to hospital nurses to Shakespearean actors, Blackout reveals a side of World War II seldom seen before: a dangerous, desperate world in which there are no civilians and in which everybody from the Queen down to the lowliest barmaid is determined to do their bit to help a beleaguered nation survive." Review Citations: Village Voice 10/20/2010 pg. 107 (EAN 9780345519832, Paperback) Publishers Weekly 12/14/2009 pg. 45 (EAN 9780553803198, Hardcover) Library Journal 01/15/2010 pg. 97 (EAN 9780553803198, Hardcover) - *Starred Review Romantic Times 02/01/2010 pg. 56 (EAN 9780553803198, Hardcover) Booklist 02/01/2010 pg. 37 (EAN 9780553803198, Hardcover) - *Starred Review Shelf Awareness 01/01/0001 (EAN 9780553803198, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2011 pg. 95 (EAN 9780553803198, Hardcover) Bookpage 02/01/2010 (EAN 9780553803198, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Willis, Connie Connie Willis is the award-winning author of Doomsday Book, Passage, To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether. Connie has been awarded 10 Hugo Awards, 11 Locus Poll Awards and 6 Nebula Awards. Contributor Bio:  Kellgren, Katherine Katherine Kellgren has recorded over 200 audiobooks and won four Audie Awards, three ALA Odyssey Honors, and eight "AudioFile" Earphones Awards. In 2011, Kellgren was named the Best Voice in Young Adult & Fantasy, and she won the Audie award for Best Female Narrator in both 2013 and 2014. Kellgren has also appeared onstage in London, New York and Frankfurt. She has recorded numerous plays and dramatizations of novels for the radio, including winners of the Peabody Award. She is a graduate of The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In naming Kellgren a "Golden Voice," "AudioFile" magazine noted that she is a "marvel with accents...she is definitely a narrator to keep an ear out for." She lives in New York City.