My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time

In fin-de-siecle Copenhagen, part-time prostitute Charlotte and her lumpen sidekick, Fru Schleswig, have taken on jobs as cleaning ladies of dubious talent to tide them over the harsh winter of 1897. But the home of their neurotic new employer, the widow Krak, soon reveals itself to be riddled with dark secrets – including the existence of a demonic machine rumoured to swallow people alive. Rudely catapulted into twenty-first-century London, the hapless duo discover a whole new world of glass, labour-saving devices and hectic, impossible romance.

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Review from Charlotte Moore and Marcus Berkmann’s book of the year in The Spectator

‘The book has a wild energy, a narrative voice unlike any other, a plot of Wodehousian elegance, and great warmth of spirit.’ The Spectator

‘My favourite writer – she’s phenomenal.’ Jenny Éclair

‘The book has a wild energy, a narrative voice unlike any other, a plot of Wodehousian elegance, and great warmth of spirit. It is also wonderfully, life-enhancingly funny, in both expected and unexpected ways’ Marcus Berkmann, Spectator Books of the Year

‘This book … is unashamedly gleeful: a kind of topsy-turvy Jane Eyre with added time travel … Sit back, suspend your disbelief, and enjoy’ Daily Mail

‘This sweetly entertaining story is enough on the magical side of realism to allow love, for once, to conquer all’ Sunday Times

‘Enchanted the critics’ Bookseller

‘Through her protagonist’s uncontaminated eye, Jensen successfully persuades the reader to review and reassess our contemporary decade’ Observer

‘Any reader yearning for a witty tale of adventure, love and time travel will devour Jensen’s delightful new novel’ Easy Living

‘A delightful read, fuelled by love, time travel and Viagra, with anachronistic vacuum cleaners tidying everything up’ Daily Express

‘Captivating…there are monts of genius. Packed with charm and energy, this is definitely worth taking the, er, time to read.’ Time Out

Less science fiction than fairy-tale, it is also a love story, complete with many dramatic reversals of fortune and narrated in an appealingly breathless, energetic style…Jensen is a consistently inventive writer.’  Sunday Telegraph

‘A wickedly funny and fantastical gothic farce…among its pleasures are a pitch-perfect voice packed full of little comic detonations, and a plot as carefully-constructed as a delicate wristwatch’. Independent on Sunday

“Discovering the work of Liz Jensen is like stumbling on a time-machine in a basement: you have no idea of where it will take you, but you know it’ll be a hell of a ride.” Asimov’s Science Fiction