New Year's Days : Psychological Time Travel Mystery

Author: Iain Ridgewalker

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 12 October 2026 by BWC Publishing in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 354 pages
202 x 126 x 23 | 390g

A cinematic and highly atmospheric time-slip mystery blending the high-concept suspense of The Midnight Library with the emotional depth and haunting ambiguity of All of Us Strangers. Set against the icy backdrop of a Scottish winter, New Year's Days is the perfect seasonal read.

Minutes after midnight on New Year's Day, forty-one-year-old Daniel Gordon receives a devastating phone call: his father has collapsed.

His father's final cryptic words, 'Find Eleanor. She'll explain', together with a cracked wristwatch frozen at five past midnight, draw Daniel into a mystery that challenges everything he believes about his family's past.

As he uncovers secrets his father never shared, involving fraud, murder, and a notorious antiques dealer, Daniel is shocked to find himself being hauled back to New Year's Days from his past. Each time, he inhabits his younger self while retaining the mind and memories of the man he has become.

Unable to explain the experiences, Daniel begins to believe that forces beyond his understanding may be directing him through his history to uncover the truth behind a decades-old crime. Yet to those closest to him, Daniel appears increasingly delusional, his mind seemingly unravelling beneath the weight of grief.

Driven by an obsession that uncovering the truth may finally bring resolution, Daniel follows a trail that takes him from the isolation of his urban Scottish home into the remote landscapes of Angus and Perthshire, where the elusive Eleanor may hold the key to everything.

As his present-day relationship with Hannah is pushed to breaking point, Daniel finds himself face to face with the teenager she once was, and again with the young woman who stood by him despite his flaws, forcing him to confront the choices that defined his life.

Hovering between psychological trauma and genuine supernatural intervention, New Year's Days sustains an agonising uncertainty throughout: is Daniel being pulled through time, or is grief reshaping his reality?A taut, atmospheric dual-narrative mystery with an intriguingly ambiguous ending, New Year's Days will leave readers questioning everything long after the final page.

Perfect for readers of Matt Haig, Audrey Niffenegger, and sophisticated psychological slipstream fiction.

Book One of the envisioned Fractured Times Trilogy.