Time Travel for Beginners

By: Jaclyn Moriarty

Narrated by: to be announced

Three strangers’ lives converge in the waiting room of Sydney’s Time Travel Agency – a nondescript shopfront that promises impossible things…

It’s a crisp, wintry Thursday when Anna is hit by a car. In the wake of this chance encounter – possibly lightly concussed, possibly thinking clearly for the first time in a long time – she quits her miserable job and agrees to a job at a strange agency that claims to have discovered the secret to time travel.

Across town, Teddy has been lying flat on his back staring at the ceiling for the past three weeks. Since his wife left him for his brother he just can’t seem to get up. When he spies an advert promising journeys into your past, he figures he can at least learn what went wrong.

And Jade, for some reason, is journalling. A friend gifted her a ‘creative mentorship’ and now once a week she’s expected to open her mind and fill pages in a small room above the Time Travel Agency. She’s not particularly convinced, but there’s something that just keeps bringing her back.

Over the course of one winter, three lives converge around a very unusual travel agency. It offers them a chance to revisit the choices that have shaped their lives and those of the ones they love – but how can you move forward if you're obsessed by the past? Time Travel for Beginners is a magical, human and hopeful novel that reminds us that the gift of life is that we can’t go back, that the only way out is through.

©2026 Jaclyn Moriarty

Critic reviews

PRAISE FOR JACLYN MORIARTY

‘It is ASTONISHINGLY WONDERFUL and magical and moving and uplifting and DIFFERENT … an instant classic … It literally might be my most favourite book of all time.’ Marian Keyes

‘I loved this book. Funny, heartbreaking and clever with a mystery at its heart.’ Jojo Moyes

‘A brilliant, beautiful, hilarious, heartbreaking, extraordinary book. I say this without bias, only awe.’ Liane Moriarty

‘A thoughtful, beautifully written, truly original, and often hilarious meditation on loss, hope, the self-help industry, and the difficulties of navigating life on earth.’ Emily St. John Mandel

‘A beautiful, lyrical curiosity of a book. It's about loss and hope, but it's deliciously funny, too, and the writing is so fantastic I found myself reading passages out loud just to savour them.’ Beth O'Leary

‘Clever and magical.’ Women's Weekly

‘This unusual novel tugs at the heartstrings.’ Good Housekeeping

‘Heart-warming and absorbing, you'll never want this book to end.’ Culturefly

‘A beautifully written, complex novel about growing up and coping with unresolved grief.’ heat

‘With an eye as keen for human idiosyncrasies as Miranda July's, and a sense of humor as bright and surprising as Maria Semple's, this is a novel of pure velocity.’ Publishers Weekly, starred review

‘Jaclyn Moriarty writes with the most beautiful eloquence, sharp pointed observations sit alongside the tightest of warm hugs. I wanted to meander, to wander, to eke out my reading time, and yet hoover up the words and the feelings they created in one heady go.’ LoveReading