Span Centuries with These 20 Time-Hopping Favorite Reads

Some of the best stories take a few hundred years to tell. But if you're in the mood for uncanny connections, hoping back and forth through the centuries is the way to go.

Where else can Zeno, an octogenarian in Idaho, and an interstellar adventurer meet but in the wildly inventive world where Cloud Cuckoo Land comes together? The action in this latest novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr takes place centuries apart and is one of many similarly structured books where characters travel and transcend time.

For a century-spanner of epic proportions, Homegoing traces the history and events of three hundred years in Ghana by following the lives and descendants of two half sisters separated by colonization and slavery. Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue Vermeer-inspired story goes from the Renaissance to the Holocaust, and weaves together eight stories of murder, violence, love, and catastrophe that all tie back to the painting and the power of art. 

We recently asked for reader recommendations for books that know no bounds–by time that is. These 23 favorites take place centuries apart, where past and present are cleverly interconnected despite decades upon decades in between. Some are based in history, some rooted in romance, and some go to the far reaches of the earth and beyond.

Be sure to add these take-you-away titles to your Want to Read shelf!