Ellery Lloyd --- the pseudonym for the husband-and-wife writing team of Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos, who are known for such works as THE CLUB and THE FINAL ACT OF JULIETTE WILLOUGHBY --- pens their most ambitious, genre-bending thriller yet in TIME TO BURN.

Inspired by the abandoned records of a forgotten professor whose work in 1972 proved that time travel is possible, tech entrepreneur Inigo Frank has ascended from his working-class roots to the upper echelon of visionaries like Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Part businessman, part tech whiz, and all showman, Inigo has turned science fiction into reality by launching Tempus Tours, an all-access pass to history that allows its guests --- after undergoing lengthy tests, training, and passing strict psychological exams --- to journey back in time and revisit such events as the Battle of Britain and the end of World War II. 

Thanks to the Regulation of Time Travel Act of 2025, Tempus is able to take wealthy men and their guests back to the 1940s, an era believed to be far back enough that no one can run into themselves, but also recent enough that the most minor misstep cannot dramatically change history. 

"If a time-traveling former cult victim with a vengeance seems like a wildly ambitious premise, then you simply don’t know the plotting prowess of Ellery Lloyd.... Lloyd has produced a true triumph of a novel full of twists, deep moral probings, and characters you won’t soon forget."

When we join our first Tempus tour as readers, we are accompanying self-made property mogul Harry Allen; Beatrice, his much younger heiress girlfriend; his tabloid-fodder son, Luke; and Luke’s wife, Sasha, the daughter of an oligarch, to March 8, 1941, right in the middle of the Blitz.

As the foursome, donning period-appropriate clothes and trained in all manners of blending in, settle down at the Cafe de Paris, they already can hear the bombs overhead. Their tour guide, Tom, assures them that they are in no danger. After all, Tempus boasts a robust research team accustomed to identifying every building, safe house and street corner that was not demolished on a single night. As long as they stick to the schedule, they will return to the present day without a hitch, even as they reckon with the knowledge that the building in which they are currently being served champagne and shrimp will not survive the night. 

All seems to be going according to plan until Luke trips on their perilous trot back to the aperture --- the opening in the seam of time that will transport them instantly back to Tempus’s headquarters. A shard of glass embedded in his leg, along with the sounds of sirens and air raids, delay the group, though they all seem to make it back to the tunnel that houses the aperture in time. Or so they think.

In the present, Inigo is calmly observing the proceedings, feeling totally in control. Despite the myriad ethical and environmental concerns surrounding Tempus, he has not only made history but changed it. And what better way to celebrate the peak of his career than with a documentary? For the occasion, he has hired Phoebe Hunt, an award-winning documentarian whose film about cult leader Roger Hunt, A Complicated Man, has made her the most sought-after producer around. 

As Hunt’s daughter, Phoebe has long grappled with the ripple effects of the Living Family community, an imagined utopia that ultimately preyed on society’s fringe residents: single mothers, people with substance abuse issues, and children. Aware that she is comfortable peeling back the layers of notorious figures such as her own father and presenting them in a more human light, Inigo has granted Phoebe full access to him and Tempus’ activities for seven days. And he’s about to learn what a PR nightmare that can become.

You see, though five bodies went through the aperture, only four emerged. Sasha is missing, lost in the chaos of the Blitz and her husband’s injury. Or at least that’s what Inigo, Phoebe and Sasha’s group initially believe. But as Inigo and the Tempus team begin to examine more thoroughly what went wrong, Phoebe notices something strange about Sasha. Once the daughter of a depressed single mother, she is Phoebe’s childhood friend who watched her entire life and future implode when the Living Family commune was burned to the ground.

Back in 1941, we learn that Sasha staying behind was no accident. Forced to suffer decades of poverty and instability, she has a bone to pick with the elite --- with every person whose abuse landed her and her mother in the commune and whose subsequent neglect turned her mother inward and unstable. One of those people is Phoebe. As the daughter of the founder of Living Family, she enjoyed certain privileges, like bullying the cult’s abandoned children --- none more so than Sasha.

Phoebe has grappled with her actions. But it isn’t until she realizes who Sasha is that she is forced to reckon with what they have truly done to Sasha and her family. As Sasha runs rogue in 1941 Blitz-era London, the people Phoebe loves begin to disappear and change. It seems that Sasha is causing glitches in the passage of history, and if Phoebe isn’t quick to figure out her next move or endgame, time itself could end.

If a time-traveling former cult victim with a vengeance seems like a wildly ambitious premise, then you simply don’t know the plotting prowess of Ellery Lloyd. Alternating between the perspectives of Phoebe and Sasha, Lloyd crafts two strong, believable protagonists trapped in a pressure cooker of trauma and time travel. Each is desperately searching for answers, and each is facing the unbeatable enemy of time. Though time travel may be a difficult pill for some to swallow, Lloyd works out the mechanics of the device thoroughly, firmly immersing readers in the science fiction of the plot while grounding them in the all-too-real concepts of power and greed. 

Though Tempus’s time-traveling tourism business is arguably the “meat” of the book, Lloyd crafts beautifully rendered, well-wrought characters who turn this otherwise unbelievable plot into something wonderfully textured and layered. By pairing this romp with searing, unflinching questions about the power of the wealthy --- and what can happen when their playground becomes the world and their toys are common people --- Lloyd has produced a true triumph of a novel full of twists, deep moral probings, and characters you won’t soon forget.