Ruth Davenport has spent thirty-one years in the same house, waiting for an answer that never came.
One Saturday morning in 1996, her husband, David, left for a short walk with their daughter, Annie, in her pushchair. Neither of them returned. No pushchair was found. No body. No confession. Only rumours, police doubts, and a house full of rooms Ruth could not bring herself to change.
Then, behind the shelves of the library she once shared with David, Ruth finds a concealed passage, and beyond it the impossible: the very days before everything was lost.
The past is exactly as she left it, and more dangerous than she knew. To learn what happened to David and Annie, Ruth must walk through her old life without touching it, follow a pushchair she cannot save, and carry what she learns back through a door nobody else knows exists. Because the answer to 1996 is living far closer to Ruth than she could ever have imagined.
Ruth has been a shadow in her own life for thirty years. Now she must become a shadow through time.
A Shadow Through Time is the third novel in the Through Time series, following A Christmas Through Time and An Easter Through Time. It can be read as a standalone story, but is best enjoyed as part of the series.
About the Author :
S. A. Carmody, Sarah, grew up in Rainhill, Merseyside, before moving to Leeds, UK, where she now lives with her family and a lively pack of dogs.
A lifelong storyteller and observer of human nature, she studied Journalism as a mature student to legitimise her extreme nosiness, later running hyper-local news sites before moving into politics, communications, and campaigning.
Her fiction includes Confessions of a Cat-Hater, released in May 2026, and the Through Time series, beginning with A Christmas Through Time and An Easter Through Time. The third book, A Shadow Through Time, is due in June 2026.
She is also the author of Rocket to the Past: Rainhill, the first book in a six-part time-travel series. The second book, Rocket to the Past: Blackshirts, is due for release in summer 2026.
Her non-fiction books include Why Gen X Had It All: Growing Up in Britain, The Little Book of First-World Problems, Rule Britannia & Beyond: Britain in the 90s, Bat, Bowl & Beyond, and From Eggs to Easter: Why the Festival Endures. She has also published modernised editions of Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier and Hocking’s Her Benny.
Sarah writes fiction and non-fiction that blend history, nostalgia, social observation, humour, and sharp human detail. Her work is written to entertain, provoke thought, and spark conversation.
