To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last (1997)By Connie Willis
This book has it all: science fiction (the genre for which Willis is best known), history, humor, romance...
The premise of this story is that a wealthy donor is trying to rebuild Coventry Cathedral. The gothic cathedral, built in the 15th century, was mostly destroyed by bombs in WW2, and the donor hopes to restore it to its pre-war appearance, including an ornate pulpit (the bishop's "bird stump"). She calls on time traveler Ned Henry to travel back to 1940 to recover these relics that were lost in the war.
Henry, however, is on time travel to the 1880s (where he hopes to get some R&R, exhausted by too many trips back and forth in time) by living the life (unknown to him) described in Jerome K Jerome's classic Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog (c 1888). Eventually he meets fellow traveler Verity Kindle and together they have to resolve a glitch in the time-travel sequence that can have drastic consequences if they should fail. Humorous events unravel as the two work together to find the bird stump and save the day. A delightful and original story!
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