Si goes back to 19th century New York to solve a crime and (of course) fall in love.

This is Janet’s favorite time-travel novel, in which Finney elaborates on themes that were set in earlier stories such as “Double Take.”

Finney’s sequel to Time and Again initially finds Si Morley living a happy life in the 19th century with his 19th century family, while The Project in the future never even got started because he prevented the inventor’s parents from ever meeting. But vague memories linger in some of the Project member’s minds, and Morley can’t stay put.

This first book of the multi-author series tells of how teens Dak (a history buff and odd duck), Sera (a science nerd), and Riq (a member of the secret Hystorians society) end up as the only ones who can save the world by fixing breaks in time that changed what was meant to be. Their first mission—saving Columbus from a mutiny that was meant to fail—is a disquieting choice that I would not choose as an introduction of history to children. For starters, they are choosing to save the man who brought genocide to the Americas. And to boot, in the broken world where the mutiny succeeded, his three ships still completed their voyage with no noticable change to subsequent centuries (apart from Columbus resting at the bottom of the Atlantic).

In an alternate history leading up to a 1945 atomic bomb in southern California, young Billie “the Kid” Davis grows up in the mid-20th century, playing shortstop better than any of the boys, flying B-25s with her Dad, and eventually—with Moe Berg and the woman-with-many-names—taking on that bomb.