What would have happened if Great Britain had not joined WWII? Jo Walton's fascinating alternate histories explore this question from the viewpoints of a number of characters: a sheltered debutante who marries a Jewish man, an ambitious policeman with a secret life, and the daughter of a complicated aristocratic family. Each volume feels complete unto itself, but taken together, they form a chilling picture of a history that nearly happened.

Farthing, the first volume, reads like a cozy mystery at first: the bubbly, cavalier tone of Lucy feels note-perfect as she skates unaware over the fissures in her family. She doesn't understand the extent of their support of Hitler and his policies--nor does she realize how quickly the political becomes personal. The dawning of her awareness, and her moral growth, forms the counterpoint to the murder plot that drives the book.

Ha'penny, the second volume, switches narrators, to give us the tangled political and romantic life of an actress with a family who might be based on the Mitfords: callous, intelligent, cruel and full of drama. Viola, far less innocent than Lucy, tightropes through a series of choices where every option means a betrayal of something or someone she holds dear.

In the final volume, Half a Crown, Peter Carmichael comes into his own. He's been the investigator of the crimes in the previous two books, and now he's risen to the rank of Commander in the Watch: semi-secret police enforcing political ideology in a Britain grown increasingly fascist. Carmichael uses his authority to hide a rescue organization within his own ranks, but even his powers aren't enough to protect him from blackmail--Carmichael is gay, in a climate of intolerance, and his enemies don't hesitate to threaten him with exposure, or worse.

In each book, the stakes rise and the moral dilemmas become more convoluted. Instead of painting a black-and-white picture of evil fascism, Walton shows us just how easily such a history could have happened: good people don't always make good choices, and every one of us has something to fear. Moreover, situations like these are happening in the real world around us; the lens of fiction magnifies and clarifies the issues, so that we can refocus on our own lives and cultures and see them in a new way. Walton should be commended for this complex and thought-provoking work.