Beyond This Time

A 911 call in Maceyville, Alabama, in the year 2000 sends two police officers chasing an arsonist straight through a rift in time and into the same town in 1963. Kat Templeton, the department's first black officer, sees a chance to save an aunt who died that year. Without her uniform, her gun or her badge, she meets the full weight of a segregated South. Her partner, Sergeant James Mitchell, a white Northerner, is taught "the way it is" and must face hard questions about friendship and loyalty across the colour line.

Charlotte A. Banchi blends police procedural with time-slip fantasy, and as Kat and Mitch try to change the past, the danger spreads to family, friends and themselves. It suits readers who like their mysteries to carry real history and real moral stakes.