Ha'penny
by Jo Walton
A fine sequel to the superb Farthing. Walton adopts a surprising and useful strategy here; instead of continuing with the hero of Farthing, this second book follows a new protagonist who is being investigated by the same, deeply-troubled police team.
We return here to an England that made peace with Germany in 1942 and that is gradually, by imperceptible degrees, sliding into the embrace of the Nazi world. Step by step, Walton explores Churchill's slippery slope and its effects on daily life -- on the quality of coffee in London restaurants and the language of domestics and innkeepers and cops on the beat.