Dominion

Set in 1952, C. J. Sansom's alternative history imagines a Britain that signed an armistice with Germany after Dunkirk, because Lord Halifax rather than Churchill followed Chamberlain as prime minister in 1940. Twelve years on, the press and broadcasting are under state control, auxiliary police patrol the streets, British Jews face mounting restrictions and Germany is still at war with Russia. Churchill leads a growing Resistance. Civil servant David Fitzgerald secretly spies for it, and he is asked to free his university friend Frank Muncaster, a scientist held in a Birmingham mental hospital who may know a secret able to shift the global balance. It took the 2013 Sidewise Award for Alternate History in the long form category.

Stephen King called it terrific on Twitter, stressing that his praise was no publisher-arranged blurb and that he had fallen for the novel and its length.