Only minutes after his tragic murder—and a hundred million years before he’ll be born—Aloysius Cook gets the offer of a lifetime.

Joining a team of time-traveling commandos may not sound like a cushy gig, but at the moment Al’s only alternative involves a closed casket. If he hopes to survive working for The Institute at the Beginning of Time, he’ll need a crash course on temporal paradoxes, recursive causal loops, and the very real possibility of the multiverse folding in on itself like a poorly made origami giraffe.

Luckily for Al, every new recruit receives a copy of The Everyday Timekeeper’s Almanac, the only guide to spacetime a time traveler will ever need. Compiled by an infinite number of researchers from across all possible realities, it contains every fact and every theory that might prove useful to a time traveler, plus helpful tips on how to avoid obliterating the multiverse.

Armed only with his Almanac, Al must dive into the time stream alongside a short-tempered saint, a self-centered cyborg, and an embittered survivor of the climate apocalypse. To prevent a cataclysm that threatens The Institute itself, they’ll need to outwit a deadly cadre of rival time travelers—hopefully without stepping on any butterflies or becoming romantically involved with someone’s grandmother.