Still Time
Still Time is the first in Michael Llewellyn’s time travel trilogy. Heroine, Madeleine “Maddy” St. Jacques, 33, is a New Orleans librarian with a penchant for history and amateur sleuthing. Her paramour and partner in time crime is Henri Chabrol, 42, a Tulane University professor with access to parallel universes via the secretive August Ones. Assigned to repair potential tears in the curtains of times past, Madeleine is catapulted to 1861 New Orleans where she encounters black masters, white slaves, glamorous courtesans of color and assorted shady souls creating adventure at every turn. When the Civil War erupts and the city falls to the Union, Madeleine experiences love, death and shattering betrayal as she battles to keep history on course and learn why she was sent back in time. It is, most of all, a voyage of self- discovery.
From the back cover:
They were called The August Ones, enigmatic entities manipulating millennia-old time corridors via specially chosen Couriers. Unknowingly conscripted for this role, New Orleans librarian Madeleine St. Jacques attends a 2014 Mardi Gras ball only to be propelled back to 1861 and a vibrant but restless city on the brink of civil war. Her journey takes her to Louisiana’s Isle Brevelle, an exotic topsy-turvy world of black slave owners, and to Five Oaks plantation where she meets her Creole forebears and is tempted by the unthinkable. Warned by a voodoo priestess that a mysterious Spaniard holds the key to her mission and that she will find him “in the last possible place she would think to look,” Madeleine’s search grows desperate when war ignites and New Orleans falls under siege. Each day brings new challenges as she is drawn deeper into a world of duplicity and passion, deceit and murder. Shadowy veils are lifted one by one as Madeleine sails on a time voyage as serpentine as the Mississippi River before discovering her destiny as a Courier and why she must fulfill it while there is Still Time.
(103,000 words; available as ebook and print)
“Michael Llewellyn’s latest book, Still Time, is a new genre of historical time travel/mystery/thriller that delights and informs the reader. Steeped in New Orleans present and past, it creates a steamy, sultry atmosphere that has you craving gumbo and beignets from beginning to end. Heroine Madeleine St. Jacques transforms satisfyingly from quiet librarian to a cunning, action-oriented Southern belle when she’s chosen by transcendent ‘forces’ to fulfill a critical mission in the past. Llewellyn’s Civil War research is accurate and illuminating which will make historical fiction readers happy, and his time-travel devices are innovative and clever, so time-slip fans will appreciate that as well. A fun romance is thrown in for good measure, so we get a well-rounded introduction to ‘Maddy’ and her friends in this first of what I hope will be a long-running series. A true page-turner, I was up until 2 a.m. finishing it!” –Mary F. Burns, author of The Spoils of Avalon
“I am an unabashed fan of Michael Llewellyn’s work. Still Time takes him back to his roots in historical fiction, but adds the dimension of time travel to combine a modern perspective as well. That clash of perspectives was particularly interesting. I learned a great deal about New Orleans during the Civil War and its exotic culture of free people of color. It’s a great, highly recommended read.” –Greg Lindeblom, author/photographer of Masculine Beauty
