A disillusioned civil servant signs on to a secret time travel project in Kaliane Bradley's inventive debut, The Ministry of Time. In near-future England, the government has discovered technology to bring people forward through time and has collected five Brits from previous centuries. The unnamed protagonist is hired as a "bridge," someone who will live and work with one of these "expats" from history. She is assigned to Commander Graham Gore of the Royal Navy, a sailor and polar explorer transported just before his death during the doomed 1845 Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage through the Arctic.
Bradley deftly blends science fiction, romance, and thriller, creating an immersive world and plot that cry out for film adaptation. Readers are so swept up by the workplace and culture-clash humor that the moral quandaries and behind-the-scenes scheming form a background hum only noticeable when the protagonist is forced to acknowledge them. The Ministry of Time encapsulates life's paradoxes as easily as it transcends genre. Kaliane Bradley has created something brilliant and entirely her own. --Suzanne Krohn