Print Length: 503 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1612189199
Publisher: 47North (April 1, 2020)
Publication Date: April 1, 2020
Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
Language: English
Praise for NOW, THEN AND EVERYWHEN
“Walker (the CHRONOS Files series) opens the CHRONOS Origins series with this ambitious time-travel adventure…a twisty narrative that expertly blends the past and the future. Fans of intelligent time-travel stories will be rewarded.” —Publishers Weekly
“Fans of Walker’s (Courier to the Stars, 2019, etc.) CHRONOS Files series will enjoy seeing the pieces of that mythology falling into place here, but new readers can easily jump in to this origin story with no prior knowledge. An enjoyable, mind-bending time-travel adventure.” —Kirkus Reviews
From the bestselling author of the Chronos series comes a page-turning novel of time travel, fast-paced action, and history-changing events.
When two time-traveling historians cross paths during one of the most tumultuous decades of the twentieth century, history goes helter-skelter. But which one broke the timeline?
In 2136 Madison Grace uncovers a key to the origins of CHRONOS, a time-travel agency with ties to her family’s mysterious past. Just as she is starting to jump through history, she returns to her timeline to find millions of lives erased—and only the people inside her house realize anything has changed.
In 2304 CHRONOS historian Tyson Reyes is assigned to observe the crucial events that played out in America’s civil rights movement. But a massive time shift occurs while he’s in 1965, and suddenly the history he sees isn’t the history he knows.
As Madi’s and Tyson’s journeys collide, they must prevent the past from being erased forever. But strange forces are at work. Are Madi and Tyson in control or merely pawns in someone else’s game?
NOW, THEN AND EVERYWHEN EXCERPT
Chapter 25 – Tyson and Madi
I startle, and even that small movement sends a bolt of pain through my skull.
A woman’s voice says, “Don’t move.”
When I turn toward the attic door, the girl from the bus stop is sitting next to one of the boxes, pointing a device at me. It looks more like there are two of her sitting there, however, overlapped. Two devices pointed at me. Two of everything in the attic.
And two overlapping versions of my pistol in her lap.
I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping that it will clear my vision. But everything is still blurred, almost doubled. The one thing I can see, however, is a faint purple glow coming from beneath her shirt. She has the key in some sort of case, but it doesn’t fully shield the light.
“Why are you here?” she asks.
“I’m here on official CHRONOS business. What year are you from?”
Her back stiffens slightly, and she glances down at the weapon in her hand. “I’m asking the questions. You’re answering. What year are you from? And . . . what color is the light for you?”
I don’t respond for a moment, trying to figure out how to handle the situation. It’s possible that she’s one of the two historians that Angelo warned me about, who were with the last stage of the march. But she doesn’t match the picture at all, and the marchers aren’t due to arrive for another couple of hours, so I don’t think so. She’s definitely not one of the five people with CHRONOS keys that I saw the day Dr. King was killed, but then neither was Campbell and he’s here. I’m not sure why she’s asking the second question, though. I mean, sure, that’s the CHRONOS equivalent of the 1970s What’s your sign? But I can’t imagine how the information could be important enough to her that she’d ask while she has a weapon pointed at me and there’s blood running down my neck.
But maybe it was a smart move, because it’s the oddity of the question that makes me decide to just tell her the truth. Well, that and the fact that my head is throbbing too badly to come up with a decent lie. “I’m from 2304. We have a . . . situation that I’m trying to resolve. And the light is purple for me. What color is it for you?”
Her shoulders relax when I say it’s purple, although she seems a little confused by my slightly snarky tone on the last question.
“It’s orange. An amber color like a caution light. And I’m coming from 2136.”
I snort. “That’s not even a good . . . lie,” I begin, and then realize that I don’t know for certain that the date she gave is impossible. Rich, Katherine, and I spent the short amount of time we had checking out the changes that were most relevant for these jumps. I didn’t check on CHRONOS history, and I don’t know if the others did, either. So I don’t really know when the program started in this timeline. “Would you mind telling me why you’re here?”
“Because someone is going to jam a rifle through that metal grate over there,” she replies, jerking her head toward the ventilation window, “and kill five people over at St. Jude tonight. And I still think there’s at least a slight possibility that you’re the someone who will do that.”
Copyright © 2020 by Rysa Walker
RYSA WALKER is the author of the bestselling CHRONOS Files series. Timebound, the first book in the series, was the Young Adult and Grand Prize winner in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards. The CHRONOS Files has sold nearly half a million copies since 2013 and has been translated into fourteen languages.
In addition to speculative fiction, she occasionally writes mysteries as C. Rysa Walker.
Rysa currently resides in North Carolina with her husband, two youngest sons, and a hyperactive golden retriever. When not working on the next installment in her CHRONOS Files universe, she watches shows where travelers boldly go to galaxies far away, or reads about magical creatures and superheroes from alternate timelines. She has neither the time nor the patience for reality TV.
If you see her on social media, please tell her to get back into the writing cave.
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