I've also got a particular fondness for unconventional, competent, and feisty heroines, like Claire in Diana Gabaldon's 'Outlander'; the series that begins with this novel has been a huge success with fans of time travel, romance, and historical novels.

'Somewhere In Time' makes me cry, whether I read the novel or watch the beautifully made film version of 'Somewhere in Time (Collector's Edition)'; Jane Seymour was never more radiant than in her appearanca as the actress whose portrait the hero falls in love with.

For anyone who wants to know about the physics of potential time travel devices, and the history of time travel in science fiction, Paul Nahin's 'Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction' is an interesting read; he has also authored a guide for science fiction writers who would like to write about time travel.

Did H. G. Wells pioneer the use of time travel as a device in fiction? I'm not sure, but no list of time travel could be complete without a mention of his classic 'The Time Machine: An Invention (Modern Library Classics)'. A film called 'Time After Time' sends a fictional H. G. Wells to 1970's San Francisco in pursuit of Jack the Ripper, who has used Wells' time machine to escape to the future; and Wells has to try to protect the woman he falls in love when the Ripper begins to threaten her. H. G. Wells finds the future as embodied by 1970's California far less idyllic than he imagined, but he copes fairly well with modern situations such as ordering up fast food at McDonald's, and the blend of comedy, romance, and suspense is appealing.

A sweeter romantic comedy (without the suspense elements), 'Kate & Leopold' has a British nobleman brought forward in time to present day New York City; love blooms when he gets to know a tough yet vulnerable working woman who has never been treated with such tender gallantry before.

It's nice that Daphne du Maurier's 'The House on the Strand' is still in print. Her story involves a visitor to England who begins to experiment with the "mad scientist" materials in his host's basement; the chemicals he ingests send him back (only as an observer) to the 1400's (I think) where he falls in love with a sad noblewoman whom he is unable to help as she faces tragedy. Fans of time travel and of the wonderful du Maurier should look this one up - it's a terrific read!

Among classic science fiction treatments of time travel, my personal favorite is Connie Willis's 'Doomsday Book'. A technical problem sends a female time traveler to the wrong time period, and she arrives in England during the Black Plague. Willis is a fabulous writer; the story, like her other novels,is engrossing. Crichton's 'Timeline' similarly pits modern scientists against the hardships and terrors of the medieval world.

Anne Rice's 'The Mummy or Ramses the Damned' is rather different than her vampire and witch chronicles; it reads somewhat more like a romance. Ramses is awakened by a team of archaeologists, including a beautiful young woman; he is quickly rejuvenated by an elixir of eternal life... and you can probably guess the rest, but it's fun getting there.

A few lesser known novels also merit mention:

The possibility of changing history is often a premise, and in Allen Appel's 'Time After Time', Alex Balfour tries to prevent the execution of the Tsar's Family.

A very sweet fantasy by Eileen Lottman, 'Summersea', tells the story of a young woman who stays with her grandparents in a run down hotel by the sea; and at night, when she ventures downstairs, she finds everything as it was in a particularly lovely summer in the 1920s; she finds love in the past - but what happens when the summer is over?

Joan Grant has written a series of books about her past lives (in ancient Egypt and other periods), based on what she considers to be her 'far memory'. Whether you take that claim seriously or not, she reconstructs the past quite vividly, particularly in 'Winged Pharaoh'.

From ancient Rome to modern times: two novels take their heroes on this journey. Sean McMullen's 'The Centurion's Empire' involves a centurion who is preserved by a sort of cryogenic process, and revived repeatedly at several points in history including modern times; it got off to a great start, but seemed less plausible to me as the story went on. Richard Ben Sapir's 'The far arena' is somewhat difficult to get ahold of, but is worth looking for. A gladiator condemned to death is frozen in the North Sea, and recovered and revived by modern oil drillers. His reactions to the strangeness of modern times seen through ancient eyes seem right-on, and I liked the story very much (although the ending wasn't satisfying - I wanted something different, I'm not sure what!) An obscure title that has recently come back into print is Edwin Lester Arnold's 'Lepidus the Centurion: A Roman of Today', in which a British gentleman circa 1901 awakens a sleeping Roman in a crypt on his estate... but the Roman, who is his double in appearance, is much livelier than his stuffy modern counterpart, and is a great hit with the Englishman's friends, and particularly his fiance. Victorian writing can be a bit florid for modern tastes, but I found this one delightful to read.