''The Book of Lost Hours'' by Hayley Gelfuso, a Chicago-based author and poet, is our "GMA" Book Club pick for September.
Gelfuso, who works in the environmental nonprofit sector, has had her poetry on conservation published in the Plumwood Mountain Journal.
Her debut novel follows two remarkable women navigating postwar and Cold War-era America, as well as the "time space," a soaring library filled with the memories of those who witnessed history, accessible only by special watches.
'Not Quite Dead Yet' by Holly Jackson is our 'GMA' Book Club pick for AugustIn 1938, 11-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in the time space, waiting for her watchmaker father to return.
"When he doesn't, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her," a synopsis reads. "As she realizes that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories ... until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself."
Meanwhile, the synopsis continues, "In 1965, sixteen-year-old Amelia Duquesne is mourning the disappearance of her uncle Ernest when an enigmatic CIA agent approaches her to enlist her help in tracking down a book of memories her uncle had once sought. But when Amelia visits the time space for the first time, she realizes that the past -- and the truth -- might not be as linear as she'd like to believe.
Blending themes of time, memory, and sacrifice, "The Book of Lost Hours" explores what we're willing to risk to protect the people we love.
Read an excerpt below and get a copy of the book here.
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This month, we are also teaming up with Little Free Library to give out free copies in Times Square and at 150 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Since 2009, more than 300 million books have been shared in Little Free Libraries across the world. Click here to find a copy of "The Book of Lost Hours" at a Little Free Library location near you.
Read along with us and join the conversation all month on our Instagram account, @GMABookClub, and with #GMABookClub.
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Chapter One
1938, Nuremberg, Germany
In the city of Nuremberg in 1938, a man told his daughter a bedtime story. The man was a clockmaker, the son in a long line of clockmakers who lived in the city's Jewish neighborhood.
Keeping time as his ancestors had for two centuries.
"Time for bed, Lisavet. You've had enough stories for tonight," the clockmaker said when his daughter asked him, for the third time that night, for another story.
Out the window, the streets had long since gone dark and chill with November winds.
The clockmaker's mind was on the work he had to finish downstairs in the shop. And more specifically on the letter from America that sat on his desk, delivered earlier that morning.
"I'm not tired," Lisavet pouted. "I want to stay up until Klaus comes home."
"Your brother won't be home until late," the clockmaker scolded.
The smile on his face foiled his attempts at discipline. He ran a hand through her hair, already knowing that she would wear him down.
His daughter was his late wife reborn, with golden hair and caramel brown eyes.
When she was alive, his wife had often teased that they had replicated themselves into two miniature versions, him in their son and her in their daughter.
It was true in the physical sense but beyond that, Ezekiel Levy and his son Klaus could not be more different.
Klaus was like his mother with his high society taste and dreams of attending school in the capital.
It was Lisavet who was most like him.
She could often be found perched on the stool beside him in his workshop, watching him coax the gears and springs of old broken watches until they shuddered back into life.
She was the one who wound the clocks in the front of the shop each morning, watching with quiet reverence as the wood and metal masterpieces sang to the tune of time.
And she was the one who would one day inherit his shop and the family secrets that came with it.
"Tell me about the magic watch again," Lisavet said, clutching his wrist tightly as he tried to stand.
At eleven years old, Lisavet was almost too old for bedtime stories at all, and the clockmaker knew it wouldn't be long before she stopped asking. He settled himself on the edge of the bed.
"Once upon a time in Germany, a clockmaker named Ezekiel lived with his two children in their happy little home above the shop that his family had owned for generations," he began in a deep voice that crackled like flames in a hearth.
"The family were world-renowned for the magnificent clocks that they sold in their store, made from the finest materials.
Gold and gems and carved wood that gleamed in the candlelight by which they did their work. Large grandfather clocks, small table clocks, and everything in between.
But among all these wondrous masterpieces was the most precious timepiece of all. A simple brass pocket watch, passed from father to son for over a hundred years.
That watch was not special because it was laden with silver or gold, but because…" he broke off, bushy eyebrows raised, waiting for his daughter to finish the line.
It was a game they played with all his stories, but especially this one.
"Because it let them talk to Time itself," Lisavet said in a hushed voice.
"That's right." Ezekiel smiled and tapped her on the nose.
"Time is the axis on which the world spins. Humans count their lives in months and weeks, as if calculating the cumulative measure of their existence will somehow earn them more of it.
Accidents occur in three clicks of the secondhand. Hearts stop in a moment of time. But there are things that happen in the space between seconds.
Worlds are built. Planets burn. Souls fade into the space between one instant and the next and memories fall to depths, lost to the silence and flames."
He dropped his voice lower, hissing like the shadows. Lisavet's eyes went wide.
"It was not always this way. Centuries ago, the things that fell from our world and into the silence were hidden.
Closed off to humanity. Unwitnessed. Unknown.
The most devoted sensed something more, seeking it in meditations, brushing against it in dreams, never fully grasping what it was they were reaching for.
As time became more tangible, more precious, so did the shadows.
With the invention of sundials came the ability to count the hours, and with clocks, the seconds.
What can be counted can be mastered, and soon the veil between our world and what falls beyond it became thinner.
Those who learned the language of time called themselves timekeepers."
The clockmaker whispered the word timekeeper with a devotee's reverence.
Outside the window, the winds began to blow.
"Like Ezekiel," Lisavet said, right on cue. "He was a timekeeper."
"That's right. It was a secret that the family had carried for decades. Until one day, things started to change…"
"A storm was coming," Lisavet prompted.
Ezekiel furrowed his brow, his tone deepening.
"A storm was coming. The world began to grow darker and in crept a cold fierce enough to blow out every hearth. People stopped coming to buy clocks from their shop.
Ezekiel could feel the darkness lurking out on the streets, advancing. The men who brought the storm were ruthless, full of hate and fire.
Some came to Ezekiel's shop one evening in the summer and asked him about his secret. They wanted the power for themselves.
They demanded that he give them the watch that let him speak to Time."
"But Ezekiel tricked them," Lisavet said, full of pride.
"Yes, he did. It was his job to protect the secret, so he gave them a fake.
They left his shop alone then, but Ezekiel knew that they would be back as soon as they discovered his deception.
Time was in danger, and so was the clockmaker's family. So he wrote a letter to an old friend.
Another timekeeper who might be able to help him."
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Excerpted from THE BOOK OF LOST HOURS by Hayley Gelfuso. Copyright 2025 © by Hayley Gelfuso. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC
