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What if the first Ming emperor was a woman? Set in 14th century China under the rule of the Mongolians, the daughter of a starving peasant family takes on the name and the destiny of her older brother after he dies of despair. She enters a monastery, pretending to be a male novice, and driven by her need to survive and the greatness that is hers in her brother’s place, leads a rebellion.

What if the native peoples of Africa developed steam power before their would-be colonial oppressors did? Everfair is a land created by Black people from many nations, “purchasing” land from King Leopold II to set aside as a safe haven and Utopia for the people of Congo and those who have escaped their enslavement in other nations. It becomes a place of international cultures and peaceful exploration where those who were silences in our version of the world fly airships and tell their stories.

What if the Civil War ended when the dead began to rise from the killing fields of Gettysburg? This new America is a place where certain children (those governed by the Native and Negro Education Act) are forced to attend combat schools where they learn to put down the hungry dead. Jane is one such Attendant who, after graduating, returns to her home in Kentucky to ignore politics as much as possible… until families around her county start going missing.

What if Nazi experimentation had unlocked an even more horrifying weapon to be used in World War II: supernatural abilities? A British secret agent named Raybould Marsh discovers the Reich’s terrifying weapons and realizes he saw them tested before, during the Spanish Civil War. How to eliminated them and the research that created them is a mission of utmost importance to the Allies, barely clinging to survival. But the weapons are not mindless by a long shot. They have their own twisted plans: for the war — and for Raybould.

What if, due to someone piercing the veil, Cairo became the center of the world in 1912 instead of London? The Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities’s youngest agent, Fatma el-Sha’arawi is called in on a case of the utmost import: the murder of an entire secret brotherhood dedicated to the man who opened the veil forty years ago. The twist? The murderer claims to be that man himself; true or not, the mere rumor sets Cairo into severe unrest. Fatma must restore peace to the city and unravel the imposter’s identity — at least she hopes he’s an imposter. Also check out The Haunting of Tram Car 015 for another book in this universe!

What if three enslaved women on the island of Saint Domingue summon the goddess Ezili into the physical world? The three women work their magic when burying a still born baby, summoning the goddess with the unused life. After traveling across space and time, Ezili turns her attention to her summoners and their suffering and plants in them the seeds of uprising.

What if a US senator’s bizarre plan to introduce hippos to the Mississippi River in the later 19th century had actually happened? You get mean-spirited, murderous mammals infesting the bayous of Louisiana, and an entire profession dedicated to wrangling them. This book tells the story of one such crew that braves the wrath of the hippos, and their pursuit of both wealth and revenge. (Full disclosure: Sarah Gailey and I share an agent.)

What if the War in Heaven descended to Paris for its final, bloody chapters? The grand ruin of the city is still filled with magic and mayhem, with the houses of the fallen and the not making alliances and vying for survival while House Silverspires, ailing due to its long-missing founder Morningstar, may teeter over the edge and take the whole glorious wreck with it.