How To Stop Time

Tom Hazard has a condition that's not in any official medical journal. Referred to in the 1890s as "anageria with a soft g," Tom—who was born in March 1581!—is still very much alive, currently working as a London schoolteacher, and appears to be about 40. Tom ages very slowly, and he's been privy to live history all those years, hanging out with Arthur Schopenhauer and William Shakespeare, speaking multiple languages, hopping the globe, and mastering around 30 instruments. He hides in plain sight, changing his entire life every eight years, enabled by the Albatross Society, which purports to keep him safe—but unattached. Living so long means repeatedly losing everyone he cares for, most mournfully, the one love of his life; the only thing keeping him going is searching for their daughter to whom he's passed on his anageric genes. Narrator Mark Meadows animates Haig's (The Humans) timeless protagonist with patient, crisp British English, with the occasional stumbles when he crosses oceans (an Arizona cowboy, he isn't!).