Timeline

Sometimes, it seems like you can reach out and touch the past...An old man wearing a brown robe is found wandering disoriented in the Arizona desert. He is miles from any human habitation and has no memory of how he got to be there, or who he is. The only clue to his identity is the plan of a medieval monastery in his pocket.In France, Professor Edward Johnston and his students are studying the ruins of a medieval town. Suspicious of the knowledge of the site shown by their mysterious financier, he returns to the US to investigate. But in his absence, the students make a disturbing discovery in the ruins: the long-decayed remains of Johnston's glasses - and a message in modern English.The implications are staggering. The consequences are earth-shaking. And the distant past isn't so distant any more.Increasingly considered an underappreciated classic that stands proudly alongside his more famous works like Jurassic Park and Westworld, Timeline confirms Michael Crichton as the king of the high-concept thriller, and a master storyteller to boot.

Timeline combines all the ingredients that make Crichton's books compulsive reading ... a brilliantly imagined story, Hollywood's favourite thriller writer evokes the experience of time travel superbly ... a rollicking read, A thrilling race against time, A cracking thriller, The present and the long-ago past collide [as] three young historians whisk themselves back to fourteenth-century feudal France to rescue a friend - and engulf themselves in all manner of mind-blowing intrigue

Born in Chicago in 1942, Michael Crichton first trained as a doctor before going on to become one of the most successful writers in the world. In 1994 he achieved a feat unmatched by any other writer: by having simultaneously a number one TV series, book and movie with, respectively, ER (which he created), Disclosure and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, on its release the highest-grossing film of all time. He also directed several movies, including The Great Railway Robbery with Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland. His high-concept thrillers were international bestsellers, and in total his books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide. He died in 2008.