Running Out of Time Books in Order

The Running Out of Time series currently includes the original novel and a much later companion, Falling Out of Time. In Running Out of Time, thirteen year old Jessie thinks she lives in an 1840s village called Clifton, Indiana. When diphtheria breaks out and children begin to die, her mother reveals the truth: it is actually 1996, Clifton is a sealed historical tourist attraction, and Jessie must escape to the modern world to get real medicine. (en.wikipedia.org)

Outside the fences she confronts highways, fast food, television, and reporters, along with the terrifying discovery that the men running Clifton have been using disease outbreaks as a kind of experiment. Jessie has to decide whom to trust and how much she is willing to risk to save kids who still think they live in the nineteenth century.

Nearly three decades later in real time, Falling Out of Time returns to the same family and the same habit of manipulating reality, but from the opposite direction. Zola Keyser believes she lives in a perfect twenty second century city, watched over by a friendly artificial intelligence. A strange handwritten note cracks that illusion and sends her searching for the cramped Midwestern house, and the great grandmother, who might explain why so much of her life feels staged. (kirkusreviews.com)

Together, the two books pair frontier cabins with immersive simulations and ask similar questions: who benefits when a small group controls what everyone else is allowed to know, and how much courage does it take for one kid to blow the whistle.

This page outlines the connections between the novels, highlights the main differences in setting and tone, and offers ideas on whether to read them back to back or with a break in between.