The Ministry of Time

DEBUT A paper pusher for the British government is assigned to an experimental time travel ministry helping an “expat” stolen from the past adjust to modern life. She’s assigned to bridge this knowledge gap as a roommate to Graham Gore from the doomed Franklin Expedition, performing both friendship and surveillance for a year. She keeps him at arm’s length to avoid acting on her instant attraction. But issues in the ministry—including overly interested spy handlers, double agents, and future tech—force her and Gore closer. But their connection might also destroy their future. This melancholic tale reads like a dryly millennial take on classical Greek tragedy. Alternately bitter, absurdist, and hopeful, the story is at once a slow-burn romance, a spy thriller, and a tightly focused character study. It also examines obsession, flattening and replaying the past, and the desire to be right overwhelming the opportunity to do good. How can history change, Bradley asks, if people barely tolerate one another’s individual pasts?