Time Warp

Zip back and forth in time with books set in the future, or books set in the past.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
In some ways this is a historical novel. It was published in 1932. It's about Flora Poste, a recently-orphaned young woman who goes to stay with her peculiarly provincial and mysterious relatives on Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex. The book is actually set in the 1940s or 1950s, and the characters occasionally use video-phones and air-taxis (despite also sending telegrams and travelling in a horse-and-cart!). With humour so sharp you could cut yourself, Cold Comfort Farm was done a disservice by the recent film adaptation. It deserves to be a much-thumbed classic on every bookshelf.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
In the future, some clever people realised that a big part of our problems hinge on body image. Is it fair that the beautiful people have it so much easier than the ugly ones? The solution was simple: make everyone beautiful on their 16th birthday, with compulsory plastic surgery. Uglies is the first book in a trilogy which mines the moral complexity of this concept, along with some romance, some intrigue and some awesome hoverboard races.

Dragonkeeper by Carole Wilkinson
Ping is a slave-girl to a cruel and lazy man who is the Imperial Dragonkeeper. Through his neglect, an Imperial dragon dies, leaving only one left. Ping helps this dragon escape, and travels with him to Ocean, along with her pet rat, Hua, and a mysterious purple stone. Set in Han Dynasty China.

Tamar by Mal Peet
The subtitle of Tamar reads: A Novel of Espionage, Passion and Betrayal, which really is all you need to know. Except that it's set at the end of the Second World War and afterwards, and that it's the story of two young Dutch men, their families, their lives, their secrets.

Bye, Beautiful by Julia Lawrinson
14 year old Sandy is a policeman's daughter, growing up in the 1960s in a small town in rural Western Australia. Sandy is cripplingly shy, unlike her outgoing, beautiful sister Marianne. And when Sandy falls for Billy, the part-Aboriginal mechanic's apprentice and town heart-throb, she discovers that her sister is her greatest rival.

Children of the Wind series by Kirsty Murray
An Irish-Australian saga that spans 150 years of history in four volumes. First there is Bridie, who is orphaned by the Great Hunger and leaves Ireland to make a new life in Australia. Then there is Paddy Delaney, who, at the end of the 19th century, runs away from his family and hides on board a ship bound for Australia. Fifty years later, and Colm is on the run, away from a repressive Home for Boys. Concluding the series, and bringing us into the 20th Century, is Lee Maeve Kwong, part-Irish, part-Chinese, all-Australian. It's a beautiful close to the series, reminding us how much our country has changed - and also of the things that have stayed the same.

Neuromancer by William Gibson
Written in 1984 by a man who had never seen a computer, Neuromancer featured artificial intelligence, virtual reality, genetic engineering, multinational corporations and cyberspace, long before any of those ideas were cool or well-known. It's a dystopian story about Case, a cyber-cowboy (hacker) who is hired by the shadowy ex-military Armitage in exchange for curing his neurological damage. A wild ride.

The Mad Arm of the Y by David McRobbie
'As I see it, life's like a straight road, then you come to the big Y…Now, the mad arm of the Y, that's exciting and dead iffy. Easy life, never pay for nuffink… [But] the goody-goody arm…Boring, wife and kids, never put a foot wrong.' Set in Australia and London, over three generations, this is a beautifully excecuted story of family, politics and choices.