For lovers of crime fiction and lovers of time travel, this book has fifteen short stories combining the two from authors who have won or been nominated for every mystery short-story award out there: the Agatha, Anthony, Barry, Derringer, Edgar, Macavity, Shamus, Silver Falchion, and the Thriller. Edited by multiple award-winning author Barb Goffman, Crime Travel was published on December 8th, which was “Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day.”

All royalties will be donated to 826DC, a Washington, DC, nonprofit designed to help children and teens improve their creative and expository writing skills, as well as help teachers inspire children to write.

Here’s a taste of some of the stories in Crime Travel.

“The Case of the Missing Physicist” by James Blakey
Philadelphia PI Mike Sturgis is having a rough 1950. His revolver is in hock. He owes money to the local bookie. And he’s been evicted from his office, forcing him to meet clients at the local diner. A beautiful blonde hires Sturgis to locate her missing father, a professor of physics. The dame’s story doesn’t quite add up, but she’s paying cash so Sturgis takes the case. He never figured that taking on a simple missing person’s case would lead him on a journey that ends with him questioning his own sanity.

“Love, or Something Like It” by Michael Bracken
For many scientists, mastering travel through time is just an intellectual challenge, but it is more than that to members of the Department of Temporal Services, all of whom have personal reasons for wanting to transform theory into reality. None have a more personal reason than Kevin Thompson, whose fiancée was brutally murdered while he was at a conference delivering a paper titled “Every Second Counts: An Exploration of Time Travel as a Fictive Device in the Works of David Gerrold, H. G. Wells, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and the Real-World Implications of Movement Through Time.” To say he is driven is an understatement, but is he is prepared for what he might learn if he succeeds?

“Reyna” by David Dean
A year ago, Reyna was a happy child. That was before the accident that left her wheelchair bound. But Reyna has a secret. She can leave her broken body and float on a breeze. And now she’s even figured out how to leave her house, drifting toward the spot—and unexpectedly, inexplicably, to the time—of her accident, where she sees it happen and realizes she hadn’t remembered some key details. With her memory filled in, can Reyna change her fate and get justice for the time she lost?

“Ignition” by John M. Floyd
Eddie Hollister, a low-level worker in an R & D lab, is about to celebrate his employer’s announcement of the world’s first time-travel device—possibly the greatest technological breakthrough in history. Then, on the day before the ceremony, he is persuaded by an older, high-level colleague to take the much-anticipated TimeLiner for a secret test drive, one that will transport the two scientists into the past and make them wealthy beyond belief. It will also make them criminals—but that should be no problem, right? They’ll be back home an instant later, and the crime will have been committed fifty years ago. The real problem, as they soon discover, is that fantastic adventures can involve fantastic risks. And that things that seem too good to be true, usually are.

“Alex’s Choice” by Barb Goffman
Anyone looking at twelve-year-old Alex’s family history might think them cursed. Ten years ago, Mom and Dad died in an accident. Then Grandmother died of heartbreak. And now Uncle Preston, Alex’s guardian, has died too. So Alex and furry sidekick Maxwell move to Maine to live with Grandfather on the shore. They’re all coping as best they can when a talisman appears—a time-traveling bicycle that takes people to the past to correct mistakes. So off Alex goes, riding the bicycle ten years into the past. The mission sounds simple until Alex is forced to make a choice that no person, let alone a child, should have to make.

“No Honor Among Thieves” by Heidi Hunter
A notorious thief holds a dinner party to unveil his newest find—a rare diamond. But uninvited guests gun everyone down, and the diamond disappears. Fast forward eighty years. The house where the massacre occurred is days away from being demolished, and Joanna’s friend Tony insists they hunt for the diamond. But they’re not the only ones with that idea. After tangling with other treasure seekers, Joanna hides in a closet—and steps out into the past. To the night of that fateful dinner party. Will she survive the party, uncover a murderer, and find the diamond?

“O Crime, In Thy Flight” by Eleanor Cawood Jones
The birth of her first child sparks some unwelcome psychic abilities in Charlotte—like she doesn’t have enough to deal with between her job, daycare, and a less than ideal marriage. As her abilities grow, they take a strange and uncomfortable twist, leading her to an unexpected time and place and a long-forgotten crime. A bit of accidental time travel is what it takes to break free and discover her real self and truly appreciate what loyalty and friendship mean. And you may never think of thrift shops in the same way again.

“The Last Page” by Barbara Monajem
When Lise took a job tending bar, she didn’t know she was working for the Montreal mob. Or maybe she just wasn’t thinking. But when she finds herself facing an unacceptable choice, she dips into crime on her own—just enough to escape to England for good. Or so she hopes, but then her vengeful former boss finds her working at a castle. Faced with certain death, what’s a girl to do when a magical golden circlet from ancient times suddenly appears? Barter with the mobster? Sell it and run? Or make a heartfelt wish to be honest from now on. . .come what may?

“On the Boardwalk” by Korina Moss
Ruby has never forgotten that scorching July day in 1975 when her thirteen-year-old twin brother, Arvin, pedaled his Schwinn to the boardwalk for what she thought would be another afternoon of pinball and bumper cars and scarfing down mozzarella-smothered slices from the Jersey shore’s best pizza place. What she didn’t think is that she’d never see him again. Now in her fifties with a cancer-riddled body, Ruby has lived with unceasing guilt and questions about Arvin’s disappearance. When her autistic friend Jacob generates a ninety-minute window into the past, she may get to re-write her family’s tragic history. With only one chance to return to that fateful day, the unlikely pair must each face their own daunting challenges before it’s too late to save her brother.

“Hard Return” by Art Taylor
How do you deepen and enrich a new relationship? Sharing stories about your past—about who you really are—can mark one significant step. But in pushing his new love interest to “tell me something about yourself. . .Something special, something not many people know,” one man may get more than he bargains for: an up-close-and-personal glimpse into her traumatic past that might end up troubling for him in unexpected ways.

“And Then There Were Paradoxes” by Cathy Wiley
What could someone do with a time machine? The possibilities are endless. Especially for a homicide detective about to retire after investigating one last case, one both confusing and intriguing. Detective Chief Inspector Trevor Ashcroft of the Thames Valley Police has an actual locked-room mystery. . .and next to the body, he finds an unusual device that could come in handy. But how does he use it?

The other stories in the book are:
“Living on Borrowed Time” by Melissa H. Blaine
“The Sneeze” by Anna Castle
“The Fourteenth Floor” by Adam Meyer
“The Dealey Paradox” by Brendan DuBois

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Giveaway: If you could time travel, where and when would you go, and why? Tell us and we’ll draw from comments for an e-book of Crime Travel (in epub, Kindle, or PDF version), limited to U.S. residents. Contest ends December 15, 2019. Good luck everyone!