The Trolley to Yesterday

by John Bellairs

Like Bellairs' own work, this novel pairs a young protagonist with an eccentric adult mentor uncovering supernatural mysteries hidden in plain sight within a house full of secrets. The pacing has that same breathless quality where ordinary suburban life suddenly cracks open to reveal something genuinely dangerous lurking beneath, and the friendship between the boys mirrors Johnny and Fergie's dynamic perfectly.

by Robin McKinley

McKinley does what Bellairs does—thrust a young person into a world operating by unfamiliar rules and let them navigate both the external danger and their own uncertainty about belonging. The historical setting (inspired by colonial India rather than Constantinople, but equally immersive) and the way she builds tension through small details of culture and landscape will feel familiar, though her prose is more lyrical where Bellairs is more propulsive.

by Norton Juster

This 1961 novel shares Bellairs' gift for making intellectual curiosity feel like genuine adventure—a boy discovers a mysterious tollbooth in his room and travels through kingdoms where language and logic are literal landscapes. Where Bellairs uses time travel as the mechanism for wonder, Juster uses wordplay and conceptual geography, but both authors trust young readers to follow complex ideas while staying completely entertained by the plot.

by Elizabeth Kostova

This is the sophisticated cousin of *The Trolley to Yesterday*—a mystery that unfolds across time periods and geography, with characters chasing historical secrets that turn out to be dangerously real. Kostova builds the same sense of creeping dread that Bellairs does, but she layers it with academic research and Eastern European atmosphere; it's what happens when you give the time-travel adventure to an adult sensibility without losing the sense of genuine peril.

by Megan Whalen Turner

Turner constructs her fantasy world with the same architectural precision Bellairs uses for his mysteries—every detail matters, and the real pleasure comes from realizing how carefully the author has been laying groundwork. A young thief is sent on a seemingly straightforward quest that becomes something far more complex and dangerous; like Johnny and Fergie, the protagonist discovers that adults aren't always trustworthy and that understanding what's *really* happening requires paying attention to what's being left unsaid.