Book Lists

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. Ursula dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war. Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can -- will she?

In a work of alternate history in which the peoples of Africa colonize the Americas, the fates of two families--one Islamic African aristocrats, the other Druidic Irish slaves--collide as two young men, one of each dynasty, confront their world and each other.

Explore fascinating, often chilling "what if" accounts of the world that could have existed–and still might yet . . .

In an alternate history novel, Lincoln escapes assassination by John Wilkes Booth only to face impeachment, and Abigail Canner, a young black woman involved in his defense, helps investigate the murder of the president's counsel.

For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end. But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion...In the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose.

The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was a resounding success–except for one detail: a second bombing mission, to destroy crucial oil storage facilities, was aborted that day. Now, in this gripping and stunning work of alternate history, Robert Conroy reimagines December 7, 1941, to include the attack the Japanese didn’t launch, and what follows is a thrilling tale of war, resistance, sacrifice, and courage. For when Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto sees how badly the United States has been ravaged in a two-pronged strike, he devises another, more daring proposal: an all-out invasion of Hawaii to put a stranglehold on the American Pacific Fleet. Yamamoto’s strategy works brilliantly–at first. But a handful of American soldiers and a determined civilian resistance fight back in the face of cruelty unknown in Western warfare. From spies to ordinary heroes and those caught between two cultures at war, this is the epic saga of the Battle of Hawaii–the way it very nearly was. . . .

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. the few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.

In a world where one can literally get lost in literature, Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection, tries to stop the world's Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature.

It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

In an America with Charles Lindbergh as president and Adolf Hitler as ally, Roth recounts the trials of a Jewish family in Newark during a menacing time of the 1940s.

It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. She forgets things she should know, but she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. She remembers the bomb that killed President Kennedy in 1963, and she remembers Kennedy in 1964, declining torun again after the nuclear exchange that took out Miami and Kiev. Two lives, two worlds, two versions of modern history; each with their loves and losses, their sorrows and triumphs. Jo Walton'sMy Real Children is the tale of both of Patricia Cowan's lives...and of how every life means the entire world.