Open Books Challenge 2026: With Time or a Unit of Time in the Title

The Open Books Reading Challenge is a year-long reading challenge for people interested in pushing the boundaries of their reading. For full details of the program, please check-out our page at: https://www.rplmn.org/books-more/discover-more/open-books-reading-challenge

These are some ideas that fit the 2026 category "With time or a unit of time in the title."

Happy Reading!

Updated December 31, 2025
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One minute
Ahn, Somin
Paper Book
In one minute, you can blink your eyes twenty times, hug your dog, plant seeds, say good-bye, watch the rain, or even save a life. So much can occur in this sliver of time--one minute can feel like a singular experience. This poignant picture book is at once an introduction to time for young readers...
The year of the flood
Atwood, Margaret
Paper Book
Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners - a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, the preservation of all species, the tending of the Earth, and the cultivation of bees and organic crops on flat rooftops - has long predicted the Waterless Flood. Now it has occured,...
The 6:20 man
Baldacci, David
Paper Book
A cryptic murder pulls a former soldier turned financial analyst deep into the corruption and menace that prowl beneath the opulent world of finance, in this #1 New York Times bestselling thriller from David Baldacci. Every day without fail, Travis Devine...
The eleventh hour : a curious mystery
Base, Graeme
Paper Book
The inventive birthday-themed New York Times bestseller from the author of the international bestseller Animalia   When Horace the elephant turns 11, he celebrates in style by inviting his exotic friends to a splendid costume party. But...
Night of miracles
Berg, Elizabeth
Paper Book
The feel-good book of the year: a delightful novel of friendship, community, and the way small acts of kindness can change your life, by the bestselling author of The Story of Arthur Truluv   Lucille Howard is getting on in years, but she stays busy. Thanks to the...
Hour of the witch : a novel
Bohjalian, Chris
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the acclaimed author of The Flight Attendant: "Historical fiction at its best.... The book is a thriller in structure, and a real page-turner, the ending both unexpected and satisfying" (Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of the...
Year of wonders
Brooks, Geraldine.
Paper Book
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'March' and 'People of the Book'. A young woman's struggle to save her family and her soul during the extraordinary year of 1666, when plague suddenly struck a small Derbyshire village. In 1666, plague swept through London,...
4.50 from Paddington
Christie, Agatha
Paper Book
2001 : a space odyssey
Clarke, Arthur C.
Paper Book
A deluxe hardcover edition of the wondrous space adventure that is the basis for Stanley Kubrick's Oscar-winning film--now celebrating its 50th anniversary Part of Penguin Galaxy, a collectible series of six sci-fi/fantasy classics, featuring a series introduction by Neil Gaiman...
The hours : a novel
Cunningham, Michael
Paper Book
Beautifully repackaged as part of the Picador Modern Classics series, this special edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is small enough to fit in your pocket and bold enough to stand out on your bookshelf. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised...
All this time
Daughtry, Mikki
Paper Book
From the team behind #1 New York Times bestseller Five Feet Apart comes a gripping new romance that asks: Can you find true love after losing everything? Kyle and Kimberly have been the perfect couple all through high school, but when Kimberly breaks up with him on...
The year of magical thinking
Didion, Joan.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * A landmark work about grief, love, and survival from one of America's most iconic writers One of The New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century * One of The Guardian's 100 Best Books of the...
Hour of the Bees
Eagar, Lindsay
Ebook
The island of the day before
Eco, Umberto.
Paper Book
The year is 1643. Roberto, a young nobleman, survives war, the Bastille, exile and shipwreck as he voyages to a Pacific island straddling the date meridian. There he waits now, alone on the mysteriously deserted Daphne, separated by treacherous reefs from the island beyond- the island of the day...
The worst hard time : the untold story of those who survived the great American dust bowl
Egan, Timothy.
Paper Book
This National Book Award-winning story, a tour de force of historical reportage, rescues an iconic chapter of American history--the Dust Bowl that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression--from the shadows. Following a dozen families and their...
This is how you lose the time war
El-Mohtar, Amal
Paper Book
HUGO AWARD WINNER: BEST NOVELLA NEBULA AND LOCUS AWARDS WINNER: BEST NOVELLA ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters--and fall in love...
A wrinkle in time
L'Engle, Madeleine
Paper Book
When Charles Wallace Murry goes searching through a 'wrinkle in time' for his lost father, he finds himself on an evil planet where all life is enslaved by a huge pulsating brain known as 'It'. How Charles, his sister Meg and friend Calvin find and free his father makes this a very special and...
Night over water
Follett, Ken
Paper Book
#1 New York Times bestselling author Ken Follett takes to the skies in this classic novel of international suspense. Set in the early days of World War II, Night over Water captures the daring and desperation of ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances--in prose as...
Cocktail hour under the tree of forgetfulness
Fuller, Alexandra
Paper Book
Alexandra Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly-lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother's childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father's English childhood; and the darker, civil war-torn Africa of her own. A story of survival and madness, love and war, loyalty and...
Twelve hours in Manhattan : a novel
Gabriel, Maan
Paper Book
Two worlds. One heart. Twelve hours. Bianca Maria Curtis is at the brink of losing it all when she meets Eric at a bar in Manhattan. Eric, as it turns out, is the famous Korean drama celebrity Park Hyun Min, and he's in town for one night to escape the pressures of fame. From walking along Fifth...
Love in the time of cholera
García Márquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Fifty-one years have passed since Fermina rebuffed Florentino and married Juvenal Urbino instead. Swearing his love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again. When Fermina's husband is killed, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life...
One hundred years of solitude
Garca? Mr?quez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Now a Netflix original series! "One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. . . . García Márquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound,...
One minute out
Greaney, Mark
Paper Book
A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! From Mark Greaney, the New York Times bestselling author of Mission Critical and a coauthor of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, comes another high-stakes thriller featuring the world's most dangerous assassin: the Gray Man. ...
Time and time again
Greenfield, Chatham
Ebook
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Haddon, Mark
Paper Book
OVER TEN MILLION COPIES SOLD The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about...
The Midnight Library
Haig, Matt
Paper Book
An instant New York Times bestsellerA GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had...
Beautiful day : a novel
Hilderbrand, Elin.
Paper Book
A summer wedding stirs up trouble on both sides of the family in this beloved bestseller from "the queen of the summer novel" (People). The Carmichaels and the Grahams have gathered on Nantucket for a happy occasion: a wedding that will unite their two families. Plans...
November 9
Hoover, Colleen
Paper Book
A gripping tale of love, secrets, and betrayal perfect "for fans of Gillian Flynn" (Library Journal, starred review) from the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author of Regretting You, Verity, and It Ends with Us. When Fallon meets Ben, an...
The remains of the day
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Paper Book
From the Nobel Prize-winning author, here is an elegant Everyman's Library hardcover edition of the universally acclaimed novel--winner of the Booker Prize, a bestseller, and the basis for an award-winning film--with full-cloth binding, a silk ribbon marker, a chronology, and an introduction by...
Towers of midnight
Jordan, Robert
Paper Book
11/22/63
King, Stephen
Paper Book
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND MODERN CLASSIC FROM MASTER STORYTELLER STEPHEN KING A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE On November 22, 1963, three...
One Tuesday morning
Kingsbury, Karen.
Ebook
A devoted fireman and a driven businessman, strangers with the same face. Only one will leave the Twin Towers alive, but will he ever find his way home? On the morning of September 11, 2001, two men meet in a smoky stairwell of the World Trade Center. One is Eric Michaels, a driven financial...
Here the whole time
Martins, Vitor
Paper Book
"I read this in one sitting, laughing out loud and cheering for Felipe to follow his heart. I love this book!" --Rainbow Rowell, New York Times bestselling author of Carry On and Wayward Son Felipe can't wait for winter break: Finally, he'll get some time away...
Wrong place, wrong time
McAllister, Gillian
Paper Book
It's every parent's nightmare. Your happy, funny, innocent son commits a terrible crime- murdering a complete stranger. You don't know who. You don't know why. You only know your teenage boy is in custody and his future lost. That night you fall asleep in...
For all time
Miles, Shanna
Paper Book
A Parade Magazine Best Young Adult Book of 2021 "A romance for the ages...one perfect little novel." --Stacey Lee, award-winning author of The Downstairs Girl The Sun Is Also a Star meets Outlander in this "unforgettable and...
The end of the wasp season
Mina, Denise
Paper Book
A savage murder with no apparent motive - DS Morrow's most challenging case brings her work and home lives dangerously close... From the two-time winner of the prestigious Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. When wealthy Sarah Erroll dies a violent death at...
A long time gone
Moehling, Joshua
Ebook
The night circus : a novel
Morgenstern, Erin
Paper Book
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves,...
The distant hours
Morton, Kate
Paper Book
The discovery of a long-lost letter reveals an old secret and the truth behind a woman's mysterious past in the eagerly awaited new novel from international publishing sensation, Kate Morton, author of The Shifting Fog and The Forgotten Garden.
The time traveler's wife
Niffenegger, Audrey.
Paper Book
A #1 New York Times Bestseller, A Selection of the Today Show Book Club, A Finalist for Book Sense Fiction of the Year -- A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and...
1984
Orwell, George
Paper Book
75th ANNIVERSARY EDITION "Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power."--The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big...
The Thursday Murder Club
Osman, Richard
Paper Book
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce,...
A tale for the time being
Ozeki, Ruth L.
Paper Book
A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki--shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award "A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be."
Leaving time
Picoult, Jodi
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A deeply moving, gripping, and intelligent page-turner about a daughter's search for her mother, Leaving Time is Jodi Picoult at the height of her powers. Look for Jodi Picoult's new novel, By Any Other Name, available...
1848 - year of revolution
Rapport, Mike.
Paper Book
This title traces the roots of the mid-nineteenth century revolutions, describes how these explosions of violence spread across Europe, and explains how their effects are still with us today.
The midnight hour
Read, Benjamin
Ebook
Twenty-four seconds from now : a love story
Reynolds, Jason
Paper Book
A Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner A New York Times Bestseller Seven starred reviews! "Jason Reynolds has done it again!...Fresh from start to finish...This is what it could be, should be, if only we were all as lucky as Aria. Girls (and...
New York 2140
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Paper Book
New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson returns with a bold and brilliant vision of New York City in the next century. As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison...
The violet hour
Roiphe, Katie
Paper Book
From one of our most perceptive and provocative voices comes a deeply researched account of the last days of Susan Sontag, Sigmund Freud, John Updike, Dylan Thomas, Maurice Sendak, and James Salter--an arresting and wholly original meditation on mortality. In The Violet Hour,<...
Tenth of December : stories
Saunders, George
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * NAMED ONE OF TIME'S TEN BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY AND BUZZFEED * NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK...
One day in December
Silver, Josie
Paper Book
LibraryReads SelectionThrough a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, Laurie sees a man and knows he's the one. Their eyes meet, there's magic, and her bus leaves. For a year she scans London's bus stops and cafes. Then, at a Christmas party, her best friend introduces him as her new...
Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore
Sloan, Robin
Paper Book
A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to eternal life--mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of...
Saturday night at the Lakeside Supper Club
Stradal, J. Ryan
Paper Book
"Stradal serves up another saga of food and family, hurt and healing, pitched between cliff-hanger moments. . . that make the pages fly." --People From the New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal, a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families...
Meet me at blue hour
Suk, Sarah
Ebook
Time to roll
Sumner, Jamie
Paper Book
In the eagerly anticipated sequel to Jamie Sumner's acclaimed and beloved middle grade novel Roll with It, Ellie finds her own way to shine. Ellie is so not the pageant type. They're Coralee's thing, and Ellie is happy to let her talented friend shine in the...
The daughter of time
Tey, Josephine
Paper Book
Named One of the Best Mysteries of All Time by The New York Times and Time Acclaimed author Josephine Tey recreates one of history's most famous--and vicious--crimes in her classic bestselling novel, a must-read for connoisseurs of fiction, now with a new...
Year of the rabbit
Tian
Paper Book
One family's quest to survive the devastation of the Khmer Rouge "Striking and moving... The comics form allows readers [to] understand through chronological progression and a close view how horror can become the stuff of the everyday."--The New York Times
Five years from now
Toon, Paige
Paper Book
'One day, maybe five years from now, you'll look back and understand why this happened...' Vian and Nell are thrown together at the age of five when Vian's mother and Nell's father fall in love. At first wary of each other, they soon become the best of friends. But five years...
If morning ever comes
Tyler, Anne
Paper Book
Ben Joe is the only boy in a family of six sisters, Mama and Gram. He is studying for a law degree in New York when he hears his eldest sister Joanne has left her husband and returned home with her baby girl. Out of a mixture of homesickness and duty Ben Joe returns to the...
Zero hour
Walden, Mark.
Paper Book
Overlord is reborn, and has developed the chilling ability to move from body to body, erasing the host's personality and ultimately killing them, forcing him to hop from victim to victim. He must find Otto, the only host designed to contain him, and for that he needs the location of H.I.V.E. He also...
Dragons of autumn twilight
Weis, Margaret.
CD
Lifelong friends, they went their separate ways. Now they are together again, though each holds secrets from the others in his heart. They speak of a world shadowed with rumors of war. They speak of tales of strange monsters, creatures of myth, creatures of legend. They do not speak of their...
The Time Machine
Wells, H. G.
Paper Book
Wells's genre-defining novel of time travel When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year a.d. 802,701, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he...
The age of innocence
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
One of Wharton's most renowned novels--and the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize--exquisitely details the struggle between love and responsibility through the experiences of men and women in Gilded Age New York. * With an introduction by Peter Washington The novel...
Seven days in June
Williams, Tia
Paper Book
A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'A sexy, modern love story to start the summer off right' REESE WITHERSPOON'A smart, sexy testament to Black joy ... I absolutely loved it' JODI PICOULTSeven days to fall in love, fifteen years...

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