A Tale of Time City
Time City is built on a patch of time and space outside history. It is full of wonders and haunted by "time ghosts," but it is nearly worn out and doomed to destruction.
In September 1939, Vivian Smith is on a train, being evacuated from London, when she is kidnapped by two boys from Time City, Jonathan and Sam. They mistakenly think she is the mysterious Time Lady disguised as a child. Only the Time Lady can wake the founder of the city, Faber John, from his age-long sleep, and only he can save the city.
Vivian wants to get home; Jonathan and Sam want her to help them in their quest through the ages of history to save Time City. Meanwhile, someone seems to be tampering with history, changing it over and over, complicating everything. When Faber John is at last aroused, Time City's and Vivian's dilemmas are resolved in ways that are as satisfying as they are unexpected.
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Diana Wynne Jones
Long before fantasy became mainstream, Diana Wynne Jones was quietly rewriting its rules—building magical worlds that felt both whimsical and wise, mischievous and deeply human. Her stories didn’t just sparkle with enchantment; they carried a quiet intelligence that dared young readers to think deeper, look sideways, and always expect the unexpected.
Born in London in 1934, Jones grew up amid wartime evacuations and an often-chaotic household—experiences that would later inform the strange, shifting families and fractured realities in her fiction. She studied English at Oxford under tutors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, though she later remarked she learned more by not imitating them. Instead, she carved out her own voice: lyrical but grounded, funny but never flippant, magical yet steeped in emotional truth.
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