You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO comes from Gloriamarie, who wants to find this time traveling book:
This is actually a series of books involving a time-traveling heroine who is part of a scientific community. This is not the St. Mary’s series or a Connie Willis book.
I found this series on the Ladies of Lallybroch reading list of other time-travel romances and I checked then out of the library.
The main character enters some sort of tunnel and ends up back in time where things are primitive, perhaps early middle ages or even in antiquity. She has with her a bottle of aspirin and she cures so many things with these pills. She falls in love with a man whose name begins with a P, I think. Somehow to her regret, she is back in her original lifetime.
In Vol 2, she is part of another investigation and they go back in time to what she thought was the same place and the same man and she throws herself joyfully into his arms, even though something seems a bit off with him. This time she brought a much bigger bottle of aspirin. It turns out the guy has no idea who she is, but since she offered, he enthusiastically accepted. She finally figures out she is in a parallel time stream or some such.
I think I read Vol 3 where she ends up in the right time and the hero is a bit disappointed with her for sleeping with the dude who looked exactly like him and had the same name.
I would love to reread these.
Sounds like quite the adventure!
I know it’s not Jude Devereaux’s A KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR, but I always remember how the time-traveling heroine would dispense dabs of Neosporin to everyone who got a cut or a scrape. I guess keeping something medicinal in one’s purse is de rigueur if one is about to travel back in time!
I thought it might be Lynn kurland but I did a quick search and it’s not her. I’ve read a lot of time travel romance but this one has me stumped as well.
It sounds like The Sterkarm Handshake by Susan Price. One of the Amazon reviews mentions using aspirin as a bribe. I found it listed in the historical fantasy section of Ladies of Lallybroch. If that isn’t the right book, maybe you’ll spot the one you’re looking for.
This immediately made me think of The Sterkarm Handshake and its sequel A Sterkarm Kiss by Susan Price which I read as a teenager. They’re YA & I don’t remember the aspirin but the heroine travels back to 16th century Scotland in the first book & has a relationship with a local man, Per Sterkarm, then in the second book returns to a parallel version of the past with a parallel version of Per who doesn’t recognise her. Google tells me there’s a third book in the series which I didn’t know about & haven’t read.
SusanH is right, it’s THE STERKARM HANDSHAKE and THE STERKARM KISS by Susan Price.
SusanH wrote, ” I found it listed in the historical fantasy section of Ladies of Lallybroch.” You found that site? I’ve been looking for it and haven’t been able to find it.
Thank you, yes, those are the books. I sure didn’t remember them as YA though.
It’s still there. I’d forgotten all about it until your post. I remember getting some good recommendations there when I started to get back into romance in the early 2000s.
https://www.lallybroch.com/
@SusanH Thanks!! I wonder why I’ve had such a hard time finding it?
The description made me think of Forged in Dreams and Magick by Kat Bastion, if the idea of identical lovers across timelines is intriguing.