The River of No Return - Hardcover

Ridgway, Bee

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525953868 ISBN 13: 9780525953869

Publisher: Dutton, 2013

Synopsis

In Bee Ridgway’s wonderfully imaginative debut novel, a man and a woman travel through time in a quest to bring down a secret society that controls the past and, thus, the future.

“You are now a member of the Guild. There is no return.” Two hundred years after he was about to die on a Napoleonic battlefield, Nick Falcott, soldier and aristocrat, wakes up in a hospital bed in modern London. The Guild, an entity that controls time travel, showers him with life's advantages. But Nick yearns for home and for one brown-eyed girl, lost now down the centuries. Then the Guild asks him to break its own rule. It needs Nick to go back to 1815 to fight the Guild’s enemies and to find something called the Talisman.

In 1815, Julia Percy mourns the death of her beloved grandfather, an earl who could play with time. On his deathbed he whispers in her ear: “Pretend!” Pretend what? When Nick returns home as if from the dead, older than he should be and battle scarred, Julia begins to suspect that her very life depends upon the secrets Grandfather never told her. Soon enough Julia and Nick are caught up in an adventure that stretches up and down the river of time. As their knowledge of the Guild and their feelings for each other grow, the fate of the future itself is hanging in the balance.

About this title

About the Author

BEE RIDGWAY holds a PhD in literature from Cornell University and is a professor of English literature at Bryn Mawr College. She lived in England for several years and now makes her home in Philadelphia.

Reviews

In her stellar debut, Ridgeway manages the permutations of the time-travel trope with originality and aplomb. Lord Nick Falcott was an early nineteenth-century aristocrat, until he unexpectedly “jumped” into the twenty-first century while engaged in bloody battle. He then discovers the powerful, secret Guild that keeps a watchful eye on time shenanigans while it shepherds its bewildered new members through their futuristic lives. Nick is prepared to live in contemporary ease in America and willfully ignore the echoes of his past, but the Guild has other plans for him. They send him back to 1815 England to discover the nefarious plans of a shadowy nemesis who seeks a talisman that controls time. Also in 1815 exists Julia Percy, whose grandfather played with time and managed to pass on his legacy to Julia without her being completely aware of it. The juxtaposition between rather foppish yet deeply wounded Nick and spunky, highly intelligent Julia keeps the pages turning, while the entire premise and plot capture unwavering attention. Recommend this engaging, nuanced read to fans of A Discovery of Witches (2011) and Regency romances. --Julie Trevelyan

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525953868
• ISBN 13: 9780525953869
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464