The Time Bubble Books in Order
Part ofJason Ayres Books in OrderSee The Time Bubble books by Jason Ayres in order, with quick summaries, series background, and where to start with this long-running time travel saga.
Last updated: July 7, 2026
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Publication Order
15 books
Global Cooling
by Jason Ayres
2014
Ten years after the first bubble, a new one is found in Cornwall just as an asteroid strike plunges Britain into brutal cold. In a small town fighting hunger and fear, survival becomes as dangerous as time travel.
The Time Bubble
by Jason Ayres
2014
Teenagers Charlie and Josh discover a strange portal in a railway tunnel that sends them into the future. What starts as a joke becomes dangerous when the jumps grow longer and a girl's disappearance puts Charlie under suspicion.
Man Out of Time
by Jason Ayres
2015
Daniel Fisher lands 22 years in the future to find himself legally dead and locked out of his old life. Branded unstable and trapped in an unfamiliar world, he becomes obsessed with getting back and finding who did this to him.
Splinters In Time
by Jason Ayres
2015
Josh Gardner sets out to prove parallel worlds are real after his ex starts dreaming of one. A trip to 2025 goes badly wrong, leaving him lost across dangerous alternate timelines and desperate for a way back.
Class of '92
by Jason Ayres
2016
Stranded in 1992 Oxford, Josh Gardner must navigate a pre-internet world while searching for a way home. Then missing people from different decades begin turning up unchanged, and the mystery pulls him deeper into time.
Midlife Crisis
by Jason Ayres
2016
Richard Kent is jobless, miserable and stuck thinking about better days. When a stranger grants him six trips into his past, he grabs the chance to fix old mistakes, settle scores and rediscover who he was.
Vanishing Point
by Jason Ayres
2016
Josh and Alice reach Canberra and join scientists Henry and Vanessa Jones in a mind-transference experiment. When the timeline starts erasing people and someone begins killing the only witnesses, they have to stop a deadly rewrite of history.
Rock Bottom
by Jason Ayres
2017
At 43, Kay's life has collapsed into drink, regret and a flat above a chip shop. Given a chance to revisit the past, she chases second chances, investigates her husband, and risks uncovering a killer.
Happy New Year
by Jason Ayres
2018
Amy is trapped reliving every New Year's Eve of her life, moving backwards one year at a time. As she grows younger, she tries to fix old wounds, family tragedies and bad choices before time runs out on her.
My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday
by Jason Ayres
2018
Thomas Scott wakes in hospital with no memory and discovers his life is moving backwards, one day at a time. As he travels from middle age toward childhood, he tries to protect his family by changing the past.
Return to Tomorrow
by Jason Ayres
2021
Thomas Scott wants to preserve the future that will lead him to the right life and the right woman. But when another traveller starts using foreknowledge for his own gain, their clash ripples from Oxford in 1988 to Ibiza in the 1990s.
Cause of Death
by Jason Ayres
2022
Henry Jones wakes on Fuerteventura with no memory and finds himself dying in different ways inside a shifting time loop. With Alice's help, he must recover the truth before the island traps them forever.
Lauren's Odyssey
by Jason Ayres
2022
Lauren has always preferred staying in the present, but a crisis forces her into the multiverse. Crossing five very different realities, she must keep moving, think fast and stop a threat that reaches far beyond one world.
Gone to the Rapture
by Jason Ayres
2023
Unexplained disappearances spread from a motorway pileup to the wider world, and panic starts to unravel society. Josh suspects time travel is behind it, but finding answers grows harder as the population vanishes around him.
Closing Time
by Jason Ayres
2024
Decades after discovering the first portal, Josh and the surviving team are older, tired and facing loss. Then a new anomaly begins swallowing parts of Earth, and the final fight becomes a race against time itself.
Series background & context
The Time Bubble books start with a simple, clever idea. In a small English town, teenagers Charlie and Josh discover a strange portal under a railway tunnel. Step through it and you jump into the future. At first the jumps are only seconds, which makes the whole thing feel like a prank. Then the gaps get bigger, people get hurt, and the boys realise they have stumbled into something that could change their lives for good.
That is only the beginning.
From The Time Bubble onward, the series grows far beyond one tunnel and one moment of discovery. Josh becomes one of the key figures as the books open out into bigger questions about how time works, what happens when timelines split, and whether ordinary people can be trusted with extraordinary knowledge. Friends, partners, police officers and scientists all get pulled in. Some books push into the future. Others circle back into the past. A few take a sharp turn into parallel worlds and alternate versions of familiar lives.
What keeps the series grounded is that the characters never feel like grand heroes chosen by destiny. They are people making the best of confusing situations. Josh is curious and stubborn. Charlie is there at the start of it all. Later books bring in Alice, Thomas Scott, Henry Jones and other recurring figures who each see time travel a little differently. Some want answers. Some want second chances. Some just want to get home. That mix gives the books a human centre even when the plots become bigger and stranger.
The tone shifts from book to book, but it stays recognisably Jason Ayres. There is British humour, plenty of heart, and a liking for big speculative hooks. Global Cooling blends time travel with a survival story after a world-changing disaster. Splinters In Time leans into the multiverse. My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday and Happy New Year take more intimate ideas, a life lived backwards, a life stuck on New Year's Eve, and turn them into emotional puzzles. Gone to the Rapture and Closing Time raise the stakes again as the long arc heads toward its end.
It is a long series, but it is not repetitive. Each book finds a new angle on the same basic question, what would time travel actually do to normal people with messy lives, regrets, relationships and bad timing? That is why the books can move from mystery to romance to disaster story without losing their identity.
If you want the full experience, this is a series best read in order. Characters age, relationships shift, and ideas that seem small at the start often matter much later. Even so, the books are written with enough context that each one has its own shape and hook. The result is a big, connected saga that keeps returning to second chances, unintended consequences and the quiet hope that maybe the past, or the future, can still be faced differently.
Edited by
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