Settling Accounts Trilogy
5 primary works Complete
Book 1
It’s 1941, and an alliance of peace holds in check the most powerful nations of the world—but it is an uneasy peace. Japan dominates the Pacific, the Russian tsar rules Alaska, and England, under Winston Churchill, chafes for a return to its former glory.
Behind this façade of world order, America is a bomb waiting to explode. Jake Featherston, the megalomaniacal leader of the Confederate States of America, is just the man to light the fuse. Opposite him is Al Smith, a Socialist U.S. president in the Philadelphia White House. Smith is a living symbol of hope for a nation that has been through the hell of war and depression.
Featherston and his Freedom Party are determined to conquer their Northern neighbor at any cost. After crushing a Negro rebellion in his own nation, Featherston sends Confederate army planes to attack Philadelphia. In the aftermath of the CSA blitzkrieg, the war machine spins a vortex of destruction, betrayal, and fury that no one—not even Jake Featherston himself—can control.
“Turtledove plays heady games with actual history, scattering object lessons and bitter ironies along the way. [Return Engagement features] strong, complex characters against a sweeping alt-historical background.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Another absorbing installment of [Turtledove’s] character-centered alternate-history saga.”—Booklist
Book 2
Turtledove's alternate history of a century-long American civil war continues . . .
The second book in the Settling Accounts sequence takes the story to 1942, during an utterly different World War II.
The Confederate States of America are locked in a tangle of jagged, blood-soaked battle lines with the United States of America. In Richmond, dictator Jake Featherston is shocked by what his own aircraft have done in Philadelphia - killing U. S. president Al Smith in a barrage of bombs. But he presses ahead with a secret plan on the dusty plains of Texas, where a so-called detention camp hides a far more evil purpose.
The United States face a furious thrust by Confederate army into Pennsylvania. But with the industrial heartland under siege, Canada in revolt and US ships fighting against the Japanese in the Sandwich Islands, the most dangerous place in the world may be overlooked.
Book 2
Book 3
It is 1943, the third summer of the new war between the Confederate States of America and the United States, a war that will turn on the deeds of ordinary soldiers, extraordinary heroes, and a colorful cast of spies, politicians, rebels, and everyday citizens. The CSA president, Jake Featherston, seems to have greatly miscalculated the North’ s resilience. But as new demonic tools of killing are unleashed, secret wars are unfolding. The U.S. government in Philadelphia has proof that the tyrannical Featherston is murdering African Americans by the tens of thousands in a Texas gulag called Determination. And the leaders of both sides know full well that the world’s next great power will not be the one with the biggest army but the nation that wins the race against nature and science—and smashes open the power of the atom.
Praise for The Grapple
“Turtledove never tires of exploring the paths not taken, bringing to his storytelling a prodigious knowledge of his subject and a profound understanding of human sensibilities and motivations.”—Library Journal
“One of the strongest books in the extended series.”—SfSite
“Compelling.”—Publishers Weekly
Book 4
The third war in sixty years, this one yet unnamed: a grinding, horrifying series of hostilities and atrocities between two nations sharing the same continent and both calling themselves Americans. At the dawn of 1944, the United States has beaten back a daredevil blitzkrieg from the Confederate States–and a terrible new genie is out of history’s bottle: a bomb that may destroy on a scale never imagined before. In Europe, the new weapon has shattered a stalemate between Germany, England, and Russia. When the trigger is pulled in America, nothing will be the same again.
With visionary brilliance, Harry Turtledove brings to a climactic conclusion his monumental, acclaimed drama of a nation’s tragedy and the men and women who play their roles–with valor, fear, and folly–on history’s greatest stage.