When Henry DeTamble meets Clare Abshire in a Chicago library they both understand that he is a time traveller, but she she knows much more than this about him as he has not yet been to the times and places where they have met before. He falls in love with her, as she has already with him, but his continuing unavoidable absences time travelling - and then returning with increasing knowledge of their future - makes things ever more difficult for Clare.

When prospective fathers-in-law Steve Tobias and Jerry Peyser meet for the first time to celebrate their children's upcoming marriage, the cake hits the fan. Dr. Jerome Peyser is a mild-mannered podiatrist with a well-organized daily routine designed to eliminate all possible sources of stress. Meanwhile, daredevil CIA operative Steve Tobias moves through life like a heat-seeking missile. His average day consists of dodging bullets, stealing private jets and negotiating with international arms smugglers. Now he's giving potential father-of-the-bride Jerry a serious case of pre-nuptial jitters. Steve's dramatic entrances and exits, his cryptic references to a Russian runaway named Olga and his fight with a gunman in a restaurant washroom causes Jerry to see a vision of his daughter's perfectly planned wedding blowing up in his face. As far as Jerry's concerned, letting Steve into his family takes til death do us part way too literally. Before he can say the wedding is off, Jerry ...

In 1998, three white men in the small town of Jasper, Texas, chained a black man to the back of their pickup truck and dragged him to his death...