The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is published on 14th May and available for pre-order now. You can pre-order signed copies through us, and receive a special pack of stickers too – just let us know at the time of ordering if you’d like your book signed, and if so, if you’d like a dedication!

Kaliane Bradley is joining us for a very special Summertown Supper Club event on Thursday 18th April. Details here.

About the book: In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’.

With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more. But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?

Make room on your bookshelves for a future classic – MAX PORTER

Outrageously brilliant – ELEANOR CATTON

Thought-provoking & horribly clever…it made me laugh out loud – ALICE WINN

A fantastic debut: conceptually brilliant, really funny, genuinely moving – MARK HADDON