The Chronicles of St. Mary's is a series of novels and short stories by author Jodi Taylor, based around the adventures of Madeleine Maxwell ("Max" to pretty much everybody) and the other staff at St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research.
St. Mary's is attached to the (fictional) University of Thirsk in the north of England, in an unspecified near-future setting in which, among other things, the US has closed its borders and a popular revolution in the UK swept a fascist government out of power around a decade ago.
The staff of St. Mary's "investigate historical events in contemporary time" - the boss gets a bit annoyed if you call it "time travel" - by means of small "pods" able to make time-jumps and carefully constructed to look like an unremarkable shack in any given time zone. The existence of time-travel is a closely-guarded secret, lest the timeline get disrupted by people trying to kill Hitler, place bets on sporting events etc. The Time Police exist to try and enforce this - not always through particularly pleasant means.
The historians of St. Mary's are often described as "Disaster Magnets" as most of their trips seem to end up with them sprinting for the pod with a baying mob at their heels, and they attract their fair share of bad luck - this can bring them into conflict with the Time Police, but their goals broadly align and they have had a mixed relationship.
The series also has a recurring antagonist in the shape of Clive Ronan, an embittered former St. Mary's historian who blames the institute's head for the death of his love, and seeks to destroy it - and comes to bear a particular grudge for Max, who continually foils his plans.
In amongst all of this, Max finds time to romance the chief technical officer, annoy the boss, make friends, make enemies and drink tea. Lots of tea.
As of June 2023, the main series of novels consists of the following:
- Just One Damned Thing After Another (2013)
- A Symphony of Echoes (2013)
- A Second Chance (2014)
- A Trail Through Time (2014)
- No Time Like the Past (2015)
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (2015)
- Lies, Damned Lies, and History (2016)
- And The Rest Is History (2017)
- An Argumentation of Historians (2018)
- Hope For The Best (2019)
- Plan for the Worst (2020)
- Another Place, Another Time (2021)
- A Catalogue of Catastrophe (2022)
- The Good, The Bad and The History (2023)
Additionally, various short stories have been published, some as freebies via the author's website or Audible, and 8 of these have been compiled into The Long And Short Of It (2017).
This series has examples of:
- Casual Time Travel: It's not a common thing in the setting, and the vast majority in Max's home time don't even know time travel exists, but for the main characters access to time machines is routine.
- Field Trip to the Past: Planning and performing trips to the past is St. Mary's primary function.
- Get Back to the Future: The inevitable frantic escape from the Field Trip to the Past
- No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: Frequently raised as an issue for the female members of the St. Mary's team, who in some eras need a male figure to be able to interact with the locals.
- Time Machine: The St. Mary's team travel the timeline in "pods" - these come in a variety of sizes, but most are the size of a smallish shed and are disguised to look like a dilapidated hut from the outside so they'll blend into most historical locations. While not indestructible they are extremely sturdy, and inexplicably their interiors always smell of cabbage.
- Time Police: Introduced in later books after Max is relocated to an alternate timeline, these are backed by international treaty and tasked by world governments with preventing any individual country manipulating the timeline to their advantage. They also ruthlessly enforce a prohibition of the use of time travel for personal or corporate gain. While St. Mary's is authorised to use time travel for research purposes, their anarchic tendancies mean they're strongly disapproved of by the Time Police, and while there are exceptions the latter tend to be antagonistic Knights Templar.
- Time Travel Taboo: Enforced by the Time Police, almost all time travel is strictly forbidden.
- You Can't Fight Fate: "History" appears to be a semi-sentient force that will intervene forcibly to preserve itself.
Tropes in individual works (Beware Spoilers)
- Can't Take Anything with You: Disproved by Max, but only if said object was about to be destroyed anyway.
- Write Back to the Future: The team hide a lost Shakespeare play on the premises in the past to be "discovered" in the present.
