Time travel is one of science fiction's most popular subgenres. Fans are drawn to its infinite possibilities, offering a glimpse into past cultures, societies, and pivotal events while exploring big what if? questions. What if you knew what would happen next in your life? What if you could go back and change history? What if you did change history?
If you’ve already listened (and re-listened) to the and are ready to explore something new and different in time travel, check out our top 25 picks below. Varying in tone and setting, these outstanding audiobooks will take you an unforgettable trip not only across time but also around the world and into new dimensions. Happy traveling!
Kindred is a harrowing, genre-defying classic from the trailblazing, multiple award-winning queen of science fiction, Octavia E. Butler. It begins in 1976 when Dana, a 26-year-old African American woman, is suddenly wrenched out of her life in California and transported to antebellum Maryland. She remains in the past long enough to save a white boy from drowning and then, just as suddenly, finds herself back in the present. But she's returned to encounter this young man, again and again, the tension and danger growing with every visit.
Actress and director Ellie Heydon's superb narration grounds this twisty, alternating timeline story about four female scientists whose invention changed the world forever. In 1967, four women built the first time machine—but on the cusp of its debut, the project was halted and one woman's contributions were erased from history. Flash forward 50 years: time travel is thriving—and the granddaughter of one of those women is determined to find out what really happened to its unsung pioneers. This is a must-listen for fans of novels about strong women as well as time travel adventures.
Fans of whimsical, humorous, creative sci-fi will love this delightfully odd yet totally charming story about a time travel technician named Charles Yu. Minor Universe 31 is a kind of alternate reality where time travel is routine and serious business. Every day, ordinary people use time machines to tinker with the past, even when it's foolish or dangerous. Part gadget repairer and part counselor, Charles is tasked with keeping these time travelers safe. But now his father is lost somewhere in this vast story-space. Could a book, written by Charles's future self, hold the key to finding him?
This enchanting middle grade novel mixes the wonder of time travel with the warmth of comfort food. Maya's favorite activity is cooking with her grandmother—her Halmunee—whose recipes are filled with stories and family history. One day while cooking together, Maya and her Halmunee create a memory so strong that it physically transports them back into the memory itself. As Maya soon learns, the women in her family have the gift of time travel through food. Will Maya be able to use her gift to protect the ones she loves? Narrator Kathleen Choe captures both Maya's sparkle and her Halmunee's tenderness. Not just for kids, this listen is made to be enjoyed by the whole family, especially while cooking or eating together.
In this contemporary classic, Chicago couple Clare and Henry find their lives defined by Henry's unusual ability to travel through time. Though he has no control over where and when he travels, he's often drawn to momentous or emotional periods in his past or future. Lush, vivid, and bursting with passion, The Time Traveler's Wife is both a time travel saga and an operatic love story about two ordinary people struggling to build a life together amidst extraordinary circumstances. Through their dual narration, Phoebe Strole and Fred Berman perfectly capture this loving couple and their extremely complicated relationship.
Six talented narrators capture every twist and turn of Lauren Beukes's unpredictable and unpausable time travel thriller, The Shining Girls. Harper Curtis is a serial killer with a secret source of protection from his terrible crimes. Hiding in plain sight in Depression-era Chicago, his home base is a house that lets him disappear into other time periods after he commits a murder. Thanks to the house, Harper believes himself invincible—until one of his victims survives and makes it her mission to catch her would-be killer, no matter where or when her quest for justice takes her.
Mike Chen's Here and Now and Then is a warmhearted time travel adventure. Kin Stewart, a time-traveling agent from 2142, finds himself stranded in 1990s San Francisco. Making the best of being stuck in the past, he eventually settles in and builds a life for himself. Now, 18 years later, he's dealing with ordinary challenges—parenting a teenager and keeping his marriage afloat—until a rescue team from the future shows up. Their mission: to return Kin to 2142, where he's been gone only a few weeks, not years, and he has a family waiting for him. Suddenly, Kin's whole life is thrown into disarray. You'll want to hear how he sorts it all out and protects the people he loves.
In this unusual and beautifully written epistolary time travel romance, two women, agents on opposite sides of an ancient galactic war, fall in unlikely love. Red and Blue have always been rivals, traveling through time and space as their superior officers command them, always trying to stay one step ahead of each other. But slowly, over years, their once-playful and cutting notes transform into revealing love letters—with consequences for the entire universe. Accomplished narrators Cynthia Farrell and Emily Woo Zeller bring each woman to life, with all her longing and turmoil.
Narrator Davina Porter's flawless accent and nuanced delivery make the 30 hours of the first Outlander novel fly by. In this beloved tale of love across time, Clare Randall, a former war nurse, is on vacation in Scotland with her husband in 1945 when she is suddenly and mysteriously transported to the 18th century. As she struggles to orient herself in time—and stay alive long enough to get home—she finds herself drawn to a Scots warrior, who makes staying a hundred years in the past seem like not such a bad idea.
New Year's Eve, 1982. At the stroke of midnight, Oona will turn 19, and she's looking forward to the year ahead. Then she faints, and wakes up in a lovely but strange house, now 51 years old. She soon learns that with each passing year, she will leap to another age and stage in her life, completely at random. That's the start of Oona Out of Order. What follows is a wild journey through time, as Oona deals with the changing world and her changing place in it. Brittany Pressley's performance adds to the magic of the story—she perfectly captures Oona at every age, subtly changing her voice while retaining the spark, passion, confusion, and hope of a 19-year-old beginning the adventure of life.
Version Control is an intricate story about the past and the future, technology, and what we believe we know about ourselves—and each other. After a personal tragedy, Rebecca Wright met her husband on a dating app, for which she now works, and reclaimed her life. On the surface, all is well and perfectly normal. Yet, Rebecca can't shake the sense that something is not quite right in her world. She constantly feels as if she has walked into a room and has no idea why; people around her often seem to be out of place. Meanwhile, her husband is busy working on his life's passion: a machine he insists on calling a causality violation device (definitely not a time machine). Award-winning narrator January LaVoy is flawless as usual, expertly voicing Rebecca and bringing even the most minor characters and small details to life.
Actor, author, and talented narrator Nick Offerman breathes hilarious new life into Mark Twain's satirical classic with his pitch-perfect performance in this Audible exclusive. The story stars Hank Morgan, a modern 19th-century New Englander who is suddenly thrust back in time to Camelot and sets out to improve the lives of King Arthur and his court. Offerman and Twain are a match made in heaven; Offerman instinctively captures Hank’s straightforward manner and can-do attitude.
Annalee Newitz's gripping and thoughtful novel provides a fresh take on the classic dual-timeline time travel story. In 1992, after helping her friend hide her abusive boyfriend's body, 17-year-old Beth sets out on a quest for revenge, determined to protect other women from violence at the hands of men. In 2022, Tess has devoted her life to using time travel to make the world a better place, traveling back to important moments in history in the hopes of changing them for the better. When Tess and Beth's paths collide, it's not just their lives that will change forever, but the future of the timeline itself.
An Ocean of Minutes is a moving story about love, faith, and weighing the costs of holding on to the past against letting it go. It opens as America is gripped by a deadly pandemic. When Frank catches the virus, his girlfriend, Polly, will do anything to save him—even traveling into the future where scientists have found a cure. If she signs up for a one-way trip into the future to work as a bonded laborer, the company will pay for the life-saving treatment Frank needs. Polly promises to meet Frank again in Galveston, Texas, where she will arrive in 12 years. But when she is rerouted an extra five years into the future, Frank is nowhere to be found. Alone in a changed and divided country, with no money or status, Polly must navigate a new life as she continues to search for Frank. Is he still alive? Has their love endured?
Kim Mai Guest narrates this excellent duology that sweeps from 21st-century New York City to 19th-century Hawaii to timeless mythical places. It focuses on a young woman named Nix who makes her home on a ship piloted by her father, which can slip through time, providing they have a historical map to their destination. For Nix’s entire life, her father has been searching for a map of Honolulu from 1868, the very place and time her mother died in childbirth. Nix dreads the moment of his discovery. Will her father's intervention in the past risk her very existence? Heidi Heilig presents an intriguing YA saga with a clever take on time travel.
While not strictly a time-travel series, Edward Savio's Battle for Forever saga follows a man named Alexander who has traveled through time as an immortal being. In recent years, he has focused on avoiding trouble and making his life as innocuous as possible. But when he and his friends are kidnapped by some very bad people, Alexander finds himself stepping out of the shadows and into a vast conspiracy across time. This Audible-exclusive series is narrated by Wil Wheaton, making it a definite must-listen.
In this trilogy, narrated by Gary Furlong, an alternate Victorian England is completely controlled by clock towers. When the clock towers break, time runs funny. When they stop altogether, so does time. It's a reality 17-year-old Danny, ace clock mechanic, knows too well. His father has been trapped in a stopped town for three years, and he's obsessed with staging a rescue. To divert his fixation, Danny's employer sends him to a town where the clock tower is plagued with problems—accompanied by a new apprentice. Danny's annoyance towards his helper soon turns to fascination. His enigmatic apprentice is a clock spirit. The Timekeeper Trilogy intertwines magic, mystery, and romance in a fully realized historical setting.
A time-traveling bandit must step up and become a hero in this novella series from best-selling historical fantasy author Kate Heartfield. Skipping across time, notorious highway robber Alice Payne juggles some of the most interesting periods of history with two opposing ideologies—setting the scene for a major war! Clocking in at just over three hours per installment, this is a quick and fun listen that explores time periods often overlooked in fiction, and Jennywren Walker’s smooth narration will take you through each twist and turn.
From British author Jodi Taylor, this expansive, rollicking series follows the adventures and hijinks of the historians at St. Mary’s. Proper scholars, they don’t time travel—they simply observe history by going to the settings and time periods they wish to study. But simple observation proves difficult, and they often find themselves in hot water in an attempt to not mess with timelines. This is the perfect series to dive into if you like quirky humor and dedication to favorite characters. There are 10 books in the series, plus several short stories and novellas to fill out the spaces in between, and nearly all of them are narrated by Zara Ramm. (Taylor herself narrates the prequel.) Since it’s an Audible exclusive, you’ll only find it here!
This colorful trilogy (Ruby Red, Sapphire Blue, and Emerald Green) was originally written in German and translated by Anthea Bell. Marissa Carlin narrates all three books, which focus on a family with the gift of time travel. Gwyneth doesn't think of herself as gifted—all her life, she’s been watching her beautiful, sophisticated cousin Charlotte prepare for her future as a time traveler. But one day, in the middle of class, Gwyneth takes an unexpected trip to a different era, She's woefully unprepared for her journeys through time. But Gwyneth will do everything it takes to learn how to harness her power—and find out why her mother would lie about her birth date to conceal her ability.
16-year-old Kate is certain her grandmother must be senile when she hands her a medallion and says she has the ability to time travel. But soon, it all becomes clear and chillingly real—when a murder in 1893 at Chicago’s World Fair rocks Kate's life in the present and threatens her very existence. And now it’s up to her to go back and right the past in order to have a future. How will Kate's actions affect her family and the fate of the entire world? Kicking off The Chronos Files, Timebound was the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award winner in 2013. All of books in the series, including spin-off novellas, are available as audiobooks, narrated by Kate Rudd.
This engaging series from acclaimed author Connie Willis is a multiple Hugo and Nebula winner. The first book follows Kivrin, a student at Oxford, and her mentor Dunworthy as they travel back to the 14th century for a chance to perform valuable research on the time period. Kivrin is also ready for an adventure—but not for being trapped in an era marked by the bubonic plague. Over in the 21st century, things are going pretty sideways for Dunworthy as well. Combining action and adventure with insights into the facts of life and human nature that connect people across time, these audiobooks, similar in length to Outlander, are the perfect picks if you’re looking to get lost in time for a while.
If you’re looking for your next romantic historical time travel series to marathon after Outlander, look no further than Highlander! In the first installment, you'll meet Hawk, legendary Highland warrior and infamous womanizer. No woman can claim his heart until he meets Adrienne, who must certainly be a fairy because she is not of this world. In fact, she’s from modern-day Seattle, and her journey back into time is a mistake. But when she’s betrothed to Hawk, she finds a love she’ll fight for across time. Each book in the series is narrated by Phil Gigante and follows a different but connected couple in a time travel adventure.
One of the very foundations of the time travel narrative, Jack Finney's 1970 classic Time and Again is a must for any listener fascinated by the curiosities of jumping through eras. Mystery, romance, and sci-fi blend in bringing to life the story of Si Morley, a young man transported from the mid-20th century to the 1880s as a result of a clandestine government project. Finney crafts a richly detailed, totally charming past, one that creates a perfect backdrop as a conflicted Morley weighs returning to his life in the present—or staying behind with the woman he’s slowly fallen in love with. Paul Hecht performs a time travel gem that continues to shine.